Bowery in a Bottle:

An Inadequate Descriptive System

Katherine Chan

“The air infused with the sweet smell of lilacs in Central Park, with intoxicating perfumes from
passersby on the Champs-Elysées, with clouds of spices wafting through Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar...
Snapshots of the most spectacular cities in the world captured in just a few bottles of perfume.”
-The Scent of Departure

The Scent of Departure is a line of perfumes designed by Magalie Sénéquier that consists
of 21 fragrances based on cities. The packaging is made in the form of a luggage tag, with
an airport code printed prominently for each city from as far and wide as KEF for Keflavik
(Reykjavik) to DPS for Denpasar (Bali). They are marketed as souvenirs for journeys both
taken and imagined, whose notes evoke an idea of the city, i.e. apple notes for New York,
and jasmine and rose accords for Doha.

If we could distill the scent of the Bowery and bottle it, what would it smell like? Depends
on which “Bowery” you are talking about. The area that runs from the East Village south
to Chinatown was named by the Dutch in the 17th century (‘bouwerij’, meaning ‘farm’)
and for the last three centuries it has gone through many cycles of urban transformation.
Its streets have seen millions of immigrants from all parts of the world. Could a chemically
composed fragrance even come close to encapsulating its grime and the glamour, in all of
its multitudes and contradictions? Which story of the Bowery do we wish to tell?

There are many narratives used in beauty and fashion marketing that could be perceived as
exploitative. The colonialist narrative has a great following in the perfume world. French
perfumer Serge Lutens created Musc Koublai Khan as a tribute to the Mongol leader who
spread fear throughout China in the 13th century. Musk, incense, rose, and patchouli have
become synonymous with the sensual “Orient.” When Rei Kawakubo of Commes des
Garçons put tattered clothes on runway models in the 1980’s, many thought she went too
far in making chic the “bag lady” and “post-Hiroshima” look.

Walker Evans, on assignment for the Farm Security Administration, was charged with pho-
tographing American farmers during the Great Depression. While Evans originated the
genre of documentary photography and became one of the most famous American artists
of his day, some of the poor farmers he photographed felt betrayed and used, and were left
in straits no different from the way things were despite the money Evans made by selling his
photographs and books.
Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, 1974–75 (detail). Forty-five
gelatin silver prints of text and image mounted on twenty-four backing boards, 11 13/16 × 23 5/8
in (30 × 60 cm) each. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American art (whitney.org).
Copyright 1975 Martha Rosler.

It is precisely this critique of documentary photography that inspired the conceptual art-
ist Martha Rosler to address the Bowery. Rosler has devoted her long and extraordinary
career to the exploration of politics and the production, display, and dissemination of
photographic images. In focusing on images of everyday life with a critical eye, she prob-
lematizes the way that photos are used at the service of discourses of power. In her iconic
work, “The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems” (1974-1975), black and white
photographs accompany cards typewritten with words such as “comatose,” “unconscious,”
“passed out” and “knocked out.” In refusing to depict the victims of alcoholism and pov-
erty, Rosler evokes the desperation of the Bowery without exploiting the people who live
there and their plight.

If we could bottle the Bowery in all of its scented code, it would be far from the fresh green
apple notes of the Scent of Departure’s rendition of New York City. The urine left by
people living on the streets, the cloud of smog left by cars and trucks barreling through,
the durian fruit sold by southeast Asians in Chinatown, the heady cologne worn by a noc-
turnal club-goer on the prowl--I doubt anyone would want to wear it, much less buy it as
a souvenir. But I challenge any artist to attempt a bottling of the Bowery, and present it
in a museum à la Duchamp with “Fountain.” The Bowery is no longer the same one that
Martha Rosler addressed almost 40 years ago. What is left of the Bowery’s famous gritti-
ness will soon be replaced by shiny art galleries, museums, and luxury residences. It is but
one of many sites of gentrification in a city whose constant push towards erasure of its past
will leave the historic thoroughfare smelling like a bouquet of roses.

Katherine Chan is a New York based art dealer and a freelance writer and editor. Her blog,
MadPerfumista.com, explores the intersection between text, image, object, and smell. She has
written for Modern Painters magazine and has edited texts on artists such as Ilya Kabakov, Isaac
Julien, Sonia Gechtoff and Judy Chicago.