William Trent

New Brunswick Photographs 1972 - 1985

The New Brunswick Photographs are my effort to make a personal connection to this place. I am from New Brunswick and had lived there till I was 15 when my family moved across the river to Highland Park. I started photographing downtown New Brunswick in the fall of 1972. I was a senior in high school and after classes I would walk across the bridge onto Albany Street and explore the side streets and I would walk up always on Livingston Avenue. I was photographing a town that was familiar but wanted to put on film a different experience.  

At first this it was a one year photographic endeavor. My family moved away but when I returned to this area I continued to make photographs here. In it’s favor the town had its individual character, but it was being transformed.

Most of what I photographed here no longer exists. One of my old schools still stands but the playground is gone. The old hotel floats in my memory inside a new hotel.  I take the train from the same station and pulling away I see the past views mixing with the present. The river seems the same.

I cared about how New Brunswick showed itself and what it presented to me.