LOVE, JONATHAN RENTSCHLER
  • 176 pages / 117 photographs / 8.25” x 11”
  • Hardcover / duotone offset printing
  • Introduction by Mark Suciu
  • First edition of 400
  • ISBN: 978-0-9986061-0-1
  • Printed in Iceland

LOVE, JONATHAN RENTSCHLER

Regular price 85

LOVE follows the last generation of LOVE Park inhabitants and reveals life as it was within this notorious urban plaza. The images, gathered over a three-year span, tell the story of a deeply rooted community shadowed by a police state and a biased city government.

Ultimately the victim of urban revitalization, the park closed in February 2016 for a 16 million complete renovation. But the diehard locals refused to leave, continuing to skate the plaza even as it turned to rubble. In the end, LOVE is a narrative about loss.

 

LOVE Park (1965-2016), also known as John F. Kennedy Plaza, was located in the center of Philadelphia. Architect Vincent Kling drafted the mid-century urban design, which was then implemented by city planner Edmund Bacon. Although it was not designed for skateboarding, the plaza was host to a wave of skateboarders who first discovered its granite expanses as early as the 1980s. It was raised to global renown in the late ’90s with a surge of media coverage. Today, LOVE Park is remembered as one of the foremost landmarks of street skateboarding.

**Signed Edition comes with 8" x 10" fiber based silver gelatin print. Edition of 20 

 In the press:

Vice

Leica

i-D

The Guardian

Monster Children

Huck

Mass Appeal

HERO

Quartersnacks 

Josef Chladek