Steven Day’s perspective views of the old high-rise Bridge Apartments in New York City continue a focus by contemporary American photographers on the more banal artifacts of the urban environment. Behind his choice is a motivation to explore a shift in urban development – away from the Modernist desire to design buildings for the working class.

“The city and federal government used to put a lot of money into these housing developments,” Day said. “It was a major priority in the 1960s and ‘70s, with international competitions and major architects working in the cities, but since the ‘80s a lot of these projects and developments have been abandoned. In the process there has been a certain kind of deterioration of the middle class.”

Towering views of the four Bridge Apartments, part of Day’s Upper City series, are among the photographs featured in Aperture and Architecture, opening Friday, June 2, at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art in cooperation with Brenda Edelson Artworks.

The Bridge Apartments, designed for low-and middle-income families, were completed in 1963. Each of the aluminum-sheathed buildings hold 2420 units in 32 stories. The project was billed as “New York’s most fabulous big-family opportunity,” where residents could “live luxuriously” in a three-bedroom apartment with views of the city and the George Washington Bridge for $179 a month.

The fact that the buildings were placed directly on top of the Trans-Manhattan Expressway was thought innovative – until people lived in them. Every apartment has a balcony, and residents are allowed to customize them in different colors of paint, but few use the outdoor spaces because of the noxious exhaust from traffic below. The noise from the expressway also makes it difficult to have telephone conversations when the windows are open.

When Sen. Robert F. Kennedy visited the project in 1967, he said the choice of this location for apartment buildings “shows a total disregard for environmental factors on the part of our city planners.”

“Most people think of Modernist buildings like these as hideous blocks that should be removed, but there’s something kind of beautiful about them, about the idea,” Day said.

Steven Day’s other projects include photographs of snow-covered cars, an abandoned 19th-century hospital in New York City, and a West Coast ocean/portrait series with 5 different colored balls that he kicked into the waves, titled after his nephew, elliott.

His paintings explore iconographic symbols and signage. His Airline Safety Paintings are based on evacuation procedures from various airline companies. “I was responding to the urban environment and also thinking about global and economic changes, and there are pop/minimalist references,” he said.

In 1996 and 1997, Day exhibited groupings of paintings on wood that were then cast in semi-transparent paraffin. “A lot of that work had references to minimalism and was mainly inspired by a trip to France and seeing the stained-glass windows at Chartres Cathedral. I didn’t want to mimic what I saw, but on an unconscious level I think it encouraged a process that combined painting and sculpture. I studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute, but my undergraduate degree was in engineering, and I did use some of that – developing this process of combining painting and cast paraffin.”

The artist is getting ready for a group show in Switzerland. His new painting series features silk-screened backgrounds of gingham material (“the kind you see on country tabletops”) with sequential images of a pumpkin exploding. “It’s like a slow-animation idea,” he said. “It’s more sardonic and darker than Upper City, with references to the 1980's horror film Halloween".