ZBIGNIEW “JOE” ZOLKOWSKI, ARTIST

People’s nicknames in the Junkyards were the worst. Like Nacho, a notorious lover of intoxicants and a well-known long-tme junkyards worker, who actually “retired” (retirement in the junkyards is usually jail and death) from the place around the Covid time. It was love, and, compared to his history in the Iron Triangle, was the way to go, since out here time is so often limited for those on the sinking ship. One winter, Nacho, knowing my tastes, is telling me about the angels in the toxic marsh where there were recently scrapyards that were leveled for development, which turned out to be an 800 milliom dollar soccer stadium, ironiclly, displacing some of the sports biggest fans. It took three days of these stories for me to understand what he was saying. Someone had been making these pieces and constructing them on site in the middle of the Junkyards and 1.000 feet from Citi Field. The bigger surprise was the creator, Joe, who, i would meet a month later. Nacho was right. There were white flowing angels in a toxic pond where there were once slavage yards.

Willet’s Point, I usually describe as the most “existential” neighborhood or place I have encountered, and, I made a career out of fateful places, shooting disappearing America, particularly industrial neighborhoods, beginning with economic collapse in the 1970s-1990s, through economic development in older cities, converting what’s left of industry.

By existential, I mean doomed, places sure to go, and, on the brink of disappearance, and, can reveal the bare, brutal facts of existence along the lines we are born, we live and we die. And I’ve never seen a place where so many die, like Willet’s Point. That’s just how it turned out, and, I don’t like it. Taking pictures in Willets Point, since 1998, I now spend a lot of time printing shots of the deceased, as they die, to send back home, for family, or, here in New York, for friends and street memorials. And that’s exactly what I’m doing here, with Joe, memorializing, him and his work, because pictures cane be a memory machine, and, really, all that’s left as proof that something happened here, and, something really did, thanks to Joe, a man of action, an artist who forgot to put himself first, and, a modern day Walt Whitman.

That fateful quality, is one of the few things that Joe didn’t grasp and I understand. I come into these places, and don’t leave until it’s done with, as in, all gone. But what I wasn’t expressing to him, was my intuition about him. I lost contact with Joe after 2019, and, when, in June, 2023, I went to find him, i knew, like so much of my work, he was not going to be there. Intuiton might be too complex. Joe was working without any protection, actually barefoot, even naked in a chemical marsh, that had a huge mix of toxins. Joe and i were from a section of Brooklyn that was the industrial and waste center for the city – Newtown creek, one of the most toxic streams in the country in Greenpoint.

He had a nickname, “Joe, Baby” that i was unaware of, until now, perhaps, we were on another level. He was the truest, hardest working artist, and, unlike so many artists, had no narcissism, only a healthy ego, and, could be a regular person, as well as, flip into a creative force, at will. We met in 2018 Willets Point, Queens, a place i had been shooting intensely for many years. We lost contact after 2019. When, i got back on my feet, in 2023, after major surgey in Fenuary, 2022, and, i found out Joe had died in March, 2022. Off the streets, recovering, at the time, i only learned of  this in June, 2023, when i got back to working full-time again, hoping he would still be here in spite of the fate-sensitive nature of intuitions which is too highfalutin’ since it don’t take much to sense disappearance in the Junkyards, and, it’s is like a third world country within NYC, like everyone says out there, and it’s large and entirely real. 

Both of us lived most of our lives in Greenpoint, and, like Joe, although productive as hell, we neglected to become part of any official kind of art world. It seemed for Joe, that his work, things and the world itself came before any other considerations. We both ended up in the toxic regions of the city, as New York City street life became gentrified out of the city, with Willet’s Point, going through the same process today. As the city’s last zone of freedom and hustle, the Iron Triangle, like Times Square and 42nd Street, becomes gentrified and disappears as an authentic place, before our eyes and the camera.

“At one point it became difficult to create my work in the streets, so I began to work in places so polluted officials can’t be bothered to remove it,” – Zolkowski.

In a way culture is nothing new to the Junkyards. Banksy dropped his Sphinx statue in a puddle of waste in 2013, and, a nice film, Used Parts, was made over at Nathan’s Yard, called, Sunrise, not to mention Chop Shop, the most well-known of th Junkyard films. More importantly, the workers of the Junkyards themselves created their own kind of vernacucular art, to attract customers to the art of mechanical repairs, and many shops did this.

October, 2013, Banksy dropped off this Sphinx at 7:00am in a pudle of waste, in the Iron Triangle. Eventually, a guy named Chaco, and his friends, who ran a small widshield shop, sold the thing to an art gallery. If you sold immediately, folks were getting up to 600k for an unsigned Banksy piece. Quite the art and gentriifcation statement,making working folks rich off art instead of the usual participants in the art market.

Culture, abounds here, the Mets, a stone’s throw away, as well as, the Tennis Stadium and Flushing Meados Park, site of the 1964 World’s Fair.

In 2019, at the age of 67, i never would have thought i could have a summer equal or better than any other. Part of that was because i met Joe. True-to-form, when we first met, hr kept me at bay, for a couple of seconds, didn’t take long to see, obviously, i was no bull shit. He was the new guy, as i had been shooting here since 1998, and, like crazy after 2012, when the Junkyards were guaranteed to go. I knew right away that someone like Joe, had found a gold mine in the wasted decrepit Junkyards, particularly in the sections that had been returning to nature, like when it was a sea level marsh stretching a half-mile until it met with the Flushing River.

About five minutes after meeting Joe, we took this shot where he maintained his endless sense of humor, while concealing himself, not quite sure of my pedigree, no doubt, but soon cured because Joe was a good judge of, uh, character, as well as being being one. A character, that, is.

We captured his “The Pensive Artist” and we we’re on.

Our documentation would continue, for two years, culminating in the Summer of the Red Pharoah, and the Night of the Baton of Patriotism, when Joe’s work was complete, and the only thing left was to leave and go on to more places, and let this work deteriorate into organic descent.

He came from Poland with his family at the age of eleven and lived in Greenpoint, and, apparently, dove into being an American artist, working on levels, that only the best can, and, he was an action artist, completely public, as in, street, physical, beyond tactile.

Joe was rarest in this sense, he was both a great artist and human being, and interesting, which is pretty much unheard of.

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