Barbara Mensch Chronicles the History and Legacy of the Brooklyn Bridge

Barbara Mensch’s “Themes For A Courthouse in Brooklyn”: A Poetic Dialogue Between Photography, History, and Citizenship

At the intersection of art, architecture, and immigration, photographer Barbara Mensch’s exhibition Themes For A Courthouse in Brooklyn stands as a resonant meditation on history, civic life, and transformation. Displayed at the Charles P. Sifton Gallery within the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the show brings together Mensch’s decades-long photographic engagement with New York City and the towering legacy of the Brooklyn Bridge. The exhibition, curated by Judge Robert M. Levy, is a dynamic mix of historical reflection and poetic visual storytelling, curated in a space charged with the significance of naturalization ceremonies and legal proceedings — a courthouse.

Bridging History and Spirit

Barbara Mensch, who has lived in Lower Manhattan near the anchorages of the Brooklyn Bridge since the early 1980s, has cultivated a profound visual relationship with this iconic piece of infrastructure. Her photographs serve not as mere documentation but as portals into the mystical spirit of the bridge’s design and the monumental human effort behind it. Central to the exhibition are 12 black-and-white photographs drawn from her 2018 book In the Shadow of Genius, which interweaves images and narrative to tell the story of John Roebling, the German immigrant who envisioned the bridge.

Roebling’s formidable biography — from his childhood in a medieval German town to his pioneering use of wire rope and transatlantic voyage to America — is reflected in Mensch’s imagery. A striking close-up of diagonal suspension cables recalls a ship’s rigging, connecting Roebling’s sea voyage to his engineering triumphs. Meanwhile, an aerial view of an untouched wilderness evokes his journey deep into the American interior, where immigrants like him began a new life.

Through these compositions, Mensch raises the Brooklyn Bridge to a spiritual symbol — its architecture echoing the Gothic arches of Roebling’s childhood church, its mass and complexity bearing testament to relentless vision and sacrificed lives. One of the most powerful images in the show, a photograph of the New York tower of the bridge, directed the viewer’s gaze toward a sliver of ethereal light breaking through the stone, conjuring the divine in the midst of industry while beckoning reflection on the workers who died constructing its foundation.

A Living City and Disappearing Spaces

In a poignant juxtaposition to the historic bridge photographs, Mensch devotes a second section of the exhibition to everyday people and threatened cityscapes — her longtime focus. In projects like South Street (2009) and A Falling-Off Place (2023), she chronicled the fading frontline of the working-class waterfront, particularly the vibrant world of the Fulton Fish Market during its final years in Lower Manhattan. The portraits of these workers, some tied to organized crime investigations of the 1980s, reveal not simply resilience but the quiet pride of those who sustain the city’s economy and culture from the margins.

Here, derelict buildings and shuttered theaters hold memories of communal joy and loss. A crumbling movie theater marquee in Spanish Harlem reads cryptically: “The Party Never Stops.” But the facade, like much of Mensch’s oeuvre, seems to question whether the party did, in fact, stop for the communities displaced from these neighborhoods.

Art Within a Courthouse

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Themes For A Courthouse in Brooklyn is its setting. The U.S. District Court is not a conventional gallery. It is a civic space where laws are interpreted, and where, several times a week, immigrants from dozens of countries take the final step toward becoming American citizens. Mensch responds directly to this function with a sense of humility and reverence.

During a naturalization ceremony documented by the artist, 94 immigrants from 31 countries stood surrounded by Mensch’s work and beneath a mural of immigrant laborers who once entered America through Ellis Island’s gates. The judge conducting the ceremony named each country represented in the room, reinforcing a collective civic identity tied not only to law but to shared labor and memory — themes that resonate in every frame of Mensch’s photographic narrative.

Through this, Mensch’s exhibition becomes a powerful dialogue: between past and present, between immigrants of different eras, and between the bridge — literal and metaphorical — that connects them. As urbanist Jane Jacobs, quoted in the exhibition, once wrote, “Diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.” Mensch’s work asks: where do we find that seed today? For her, it may be in the light refracted through stone, in the laughter of fishmongers, or in the raised hands of new Americans swearing an oath in a Brooklyn courtroom.

Conclusion

Themes For A Courthouse in Brooklyn is not just a photographic exhibition, but a civic act. Barbara Mensch masterfully layers aesthetic, historical, and emotional elements to explore what it means to belong to a city — and to a nation. Through her lens, we