The Knoxboro-Utica years

Photo series by Sylvia de Swann

“In 1976 I moved with my son and second husband to Upstate New York, a rambling old house in a hamlet named Knoxboro. We heated with wood and coal, had chickens, a big garden, my son went to the local school and my husband and I took photos of the neighbors and small town life which was so different from the city life and ambience I came from. Before that I'd lived in New Orleans, Mexico City, New York City, and multiple other stops in my life's trajectory, leading back to my birthplace in Romania.

Soon after our arrival I wrote in my journal, I sit here before my worktable, the same one I had in New Orleans, similar to one I had Mexico City. Sometimes it is hard for me to imagine that I'm at a different place than the one where I've always been other times I wonder if I'm still the same person calling myself I. As in every other place where I've lived, there are moments when I ask myself what am I doing here? Always feeling at least a partial pull to someplace else other cities other people. But strangely Central New York has become home and I've by now lived here longer than anywhere else."

Eventually my husband and I separated, my son went off to school and I moved to Utica to be near my job as Executive Director of Sculpture Space, an international residency program for professional artists. From photographing rural life I turned to post industrial urban scenes and the many rituals, festivals, demonstrations that punctuate each year.

In recent years we've seen an influx of immigrants from all the world's war zones and Utica has become known as the "city that loves refugees," a more interesting multi-cultural place.”