Crumbling Land, a project by Noah Gotlib, was on view at Citygroup from June 4 to August 1.
Just before the Fourth of July in 2006, the year I moved to the Catskills, days of rain were followed by a flood at dawn. The river swept over the village park, inundating the carnival that had come to town. Water rushed in waves into my basement and took out the stream walls a few feet away. Five years later, Hurricane Irene destroyed the supermarket and our local CVS. Main Street was made desolate, full of empty storefronts with boarded-up windows. People worried the grocery store—lying in a channel, I learned, that is even more prone to deluge than a floodplain—would never reopen. (A year later, armored with some system of flood defenses the owners paid for, it did.) What we really lost were homes. FEMA and other government agencies bought the deluged buildings. Where one house once stood a mass of vetch now rises. Another desolate homesite is just bushes next to the post office. Others are marked by notices admonishing you to pick up after your …
