Diary: 285 Kent’s Final Days

A 20-year-old photographer’s heartbreaking goodbye.

Photographer Sam Clarke
January 21, 2014
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    A 20-year-old photographer's bittersweet goodbye


    This past Sunday, 285 Kent, the wide-open and damp box perched precariously on Williamsburg's developing waterfront, held its last party. Much has been made of this, one more disappearing act for a "mostly disappeared New York." 20-year-old photographer Sam Clarke, a former FADER intern and New Yorker still unable to attend most of the city's above-ground clubs, attended 285's four goodbye shows. To pay tribute along with the rest, we're publishing a collection of his photos from those nights, of the show's stars and the club's soon-to-be-blurred ephemera. "It was basically just reporting. I really hate typical concert photography so I wanted to switch it up and illustrate 285 in ways that I felt like it was special," he says. "For me, 285 was all about the diversity of the crowds and really specific moments. I wanted to represent that by bringing in smaller detail shots alongside pictures of the bands playing. The murals there, the can lights that lit up almost every show the same way—I felt like those small details were kinda iconic and important."


    Diary: 285 Kent’s Final Days