Bethany Altschwager
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Bethany Altschwager’s work starts with what’s on the ground—cracks in the pavement, chipped paint, overlooked parts of the city. What began as a way to stay present during long commutes grew into her "Street Layers" series, where texture, color, and memory come together. With a background in art therapy and analog photography, she brings a sense of care to the images. They hold the mix of what fades and what stays. Her work captures the feeling of a place that’s always changing but still leaves something behind. Each piece comes from paying attention to what’s usually passed by.
Q: You’ve described the "Street Layers" series as a way to stay grounded during hectic days. How did the act of photographing your routes help you hold on to a sense of place?
A: Taking pictures forced me to slow down and appreciate what was going on around me. I had to be open to finding beauty in unusual places, like the spindly lines of cracks in the sidewalk and the accidental collages of torn ads on subway platforms. By highlighting these parts through photography, they become etched in my mind as landmarks. For a while — whether that is weeks, months, or even years — that tag, that section of peeling paint, or that sticker is recognizable and familiar. It affords a sense of comfort and hominess every time I see it again.
Q: The titles in your work sound familiar but aren’t real. What does that allow you to do?
A: The duality of the titles as both familiar and unreal allows me to consolidate the experience of passing through different spaces into a single image. What I’ve always appreciated about photography is how the compositional process is about editing down what is already out there in the world to its most essential components — no more and no less. The collages take the most visually significant elements from the day and similarly pare them down. Some spray paint from this street, bits of paste-ups from that street, until the image comes together and feels consistent with my experience.
Each of the streets mentioned in the title represents the location of at least one of the layers within the collage. Often, the neighborhoods in New York City vary widely even though they are within a relatively small geographical space.
The titles offer my suggestion of what it looks and feels like for these different worlds to mash up. As the series has expanded, it also allows me to incorporate locations from outside of the city.
Q: In "West 16th and Green Street", the textures feel almost alive. How do they guide the direction of your work?
A: Growing up, my mother always made sure that my brother and I were involved in the arts. She put me in dance, we took pottery classes together, and she was always making something at home — usually cross-stitch, knitting, or weaving. She likes to joke that she has the most expensive insulation in New England because of her yarn collection, which she had on shelves on every wall of the basement when I was growing up.
She was always the person who gets scolded at museums for getting too close to the artwork or trying to touch things. All of that is to say that I think I developed a reverence and appreciation for texture, and it started with her.
As I started exploring photography, I was drawn to highlighting the textures that I found around me. Growing up in Connecticut, most of the textures I could find were from nature. I drew inspiration from modernist photographers and the way they elevated humble items into grand, abstract compositions. When I moved to New York to finish graduate school, the textures around me changed. So instead of rocks, bark, and moss, I had concrete, brick, asphalt, and metal.
To obtain the textures in pieces like "West 16th and Green Street", it starts by zooming in with my feet. I get as close as I can to my subject without the image going blurry. On the computer, I work a lot with blend modes between the layers so that parts of the picture naturally advance while others recede. When I was making "West 16th and Green Street", I noticed that it started looking botanical — like a dried leaf or a plant under a microscope. I was delighted when it happened, and that’s when I knew the piece was finished. Ultimately, I guide the direction of my work through experimentation, play, and an appreciation for color, movement, and texture.
Q: You started in the darkroom. What parts of your analog roots still show up in how you work now?
A: The more time I spent in the darkroom, the more I started experimenting with alternative techniques like photograms, double exposure, and solarization. I love the alchemy of it all — playing with light and seeing what would happen.
When darkrooms started closing, I tried to find a means of replicating those experimental processes with the digital tools I have available. The way that I layer images in my digital collages is a part of that earlier darkroom work that carries over into my process now. As much as I miss the darkroom, what I lost in chemistry I gained in being able to work with color.
Q: How does your work in art therapy shape the way you approach your art?
A: I see my work in art therapy and my approach to my artwork in a circular relationship. I’ve always been interested in art, and those early years in the darkroom were life-saving for me. Having that outlet and that refuge from the world is a big part of what influenced me to work as an art teacher and later as an art therapist. I wanted to help people find their version of the darkroom — whether that was on paper, canvas, with found objects, or whatever — the important thing was finding an outlet.
Art helps you to express the thoughts and feelings that don’t really have words yet. The arts help to bridge the gap between how we feel and how we communicate those feelings both to ourselves and to other people. It can be one of our most valuable tools for self-discovery and empathy. I was very reserved growing up, and most people never knew if I was angry or lonely.
At that time, I certainly couldn’t tell you that I was feeling that way, but I could show you through my artwork. As an art therapist, I try to find the words and feelings underneath the pictures so clients can make the words speakable.
My belief that the arts should be for everyone informs how I appreciate images in the world around me. That sensibility translates into the kinds of textures and subject matter that I use to compose my images. Graffiti and street art are very much about the democratization of public spaces — and even more so, about asserting the fundamental need to show that we exist, that we matter.
Q: Your images capture things that are constantly disappearing — graffiti, stickers, cracks, layers. What draws you to what’s meant to fade?
A: When I started the series, I was primarily attracted to the visual qualities of graffiti and the other textures of the city. I was reminded of the gestural brushstrokes of expressionist painting, and I loved the juxtaposition of beautiful colors and striking compositions with the base materials it came from. The transitory nature of these objects also reflected my passing through different spaces. There is a liminal quality to these subjects that mirrored my experiences of moving to a new state, changing careers, and trying to figure out who I am post-graduate school and post-divorce. I think a lot of it has to do with trying to find a balance between holding on and letting go. Holding on to moments of joy and memories, not letting them slip through my fingers. Letting go of resentments and old patterns that don’t serve me anymore.
Shortly before I started the "Street Layers" series, I lost my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother less than one month apart. The hardest part was knowing that I didn’t get to see them or talk to them before they died. I remember the uncanny feeling of seeing their memorials online. Here were these pictures that represented people I love who aren’t around anymore. In some ways I think that photographing things that are meant to fade helps me to keep in mind memento mori — this idea that life is short and I should be grateful for the present moment.
