Transitory Space

Leah Oates


“The world thus appears to be a complicated tissue of events in which connections of different kinds alternate, overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux, and at moments this flux is visible.” Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Transitory Space, Prospect Park #14, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park #14, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 24, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 24, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 36, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 36, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x 14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 39, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x14, Color Photography

Transitory Space, Prospect Park # 39, Brooklyn, October 2017, 11 x14, Color Photography


The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions, and a continual human imprint.  In everyone and in everything there are daily changes and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space.

Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.





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Leah Oates

Oates has a B.F.A. form the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Oates has had solo shows at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Real Art Ways, Artemisia Gallery and at The Brooklyn Public Library. In 2017, this series was featured in the MTA Arts and Design Lightbox Project at 42nd Street in NYC.

Oates has been part of group shows in NYC at The Pen and Brush Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art, NYOC Gallery, 440 Gallery, Nurture Art Gallery, Momenta Art, Associated Gallery, Susan Eley Fine Art and at Denise Bibro Fine Art. Works on paper by Oates are in numerous public collections including the Harvard University Libraries, The Brooklyn Museum Artists’ Book Collection, The Walker Art Center Libraries, The Smithsonian Libraries and the Franklin Furnace Archive at MoMa, NYC.