ERICA MCDONALD Photographer

New: The Laundry Sherpas of Brooklyn

Journeying through the outskirts of their borough, the Laundry Sherpas of Brooklyn traverse the urban-industrial into the psycho-geographical territory of shifting land utilization. In hopes of finding the river, they bear their loads and navigate through the built landscape, confronting a lack of a natural environment in which to cleanse their daily habits. They travel through the transitional third landscape and the edges of those places where nature and the man-altered topography intersect, but cannot escape the walls which line their path. The Laundry Sherpas of Brooklyn discard their belongings, rest, and recall a bucolic past in an effort to release the weights they carry, but unless they regain the memory of the way to the river, they will have no choice but to abandon their quest in the terrain vague and return to a consumptive society. 

The Laundry Sherpas of Brooklyn is a fictive story - a conceptual narrative that resides at the intersection of fact and fiction - created in collaboration with the denizens (aka the sherpas) of the borough on their way to do their washing.  

  • Spilled laundry soap
  • Where the Sherpas wander
  • Mountain sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Sailor sherpa
  • Reaching sherpa
  • Tired sherpa
  • Where the earth meets man
  • Railroad sherpa
  • The river
  • Waiting sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Blue sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Balancing sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Key Food sherpa
  • Ring sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Basket sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Sherpa sherpa
  • Dress sherpa
  • Where the dog lives
  • Where the earth meets man
  • Red sherpa
  • Where the Sherpas wander
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Mean Sherpa
  • See-through sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Seeking sherpa
  • Matador sherpas
  • Trailer sherpa
  • Purple sherpa
  • Where the Sherpas wander
  • Curlers sherpa
  • Circle sherpa
  • Immigrant sherpa
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Dead end sherpa
  • Tires sherpa
  • Where the earth meets man
  • Well dressed sherpa
  • Windy sherpa
  • The river
  • Lost/discarded item
  • Ikea sherpa
  • Where the earth meets man
  • End sherpa
  • The river
  • New: The Laundry Sherpas of Brooklyn
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    • scribbling An Evening with Robert Frank at the Met 2009
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