Jose Gaytan’s Gowanus

The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn is not known for its scenic beauty, to say the least. But the photos taken there by Jose Gaytan are well worth a trip to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, where they will be on display until August 29. Gaytan’s website has many more striking images (though I found it a bit buggy) and the Times recently covered his work and included a slide show.

Almost every day for the past six years, Mr. Gaytan and his two dogs have crisscrossed the streets and bridges along Brooklyn’s famous mile-and-a-half long canal, photographing moments of serenity, color and even beauty amid the decaying postindustrial landscape.

Turbulent cloudscapes float above panoramas of yellow brick projects and milky-slick water. Flowers poke out defiantly from cracked concrete. And moss-covered castoffs from long abandoned factories bob by the shoreline.

These sights might drive others away. For Mr. Gaytan, they trigger powerful memories of his childhood in 1950s Mexico.

“When I was growing up in Juarez, my grandfather was a handyman who took me on jobs with him,” he explained. “The first thing he would do was go to the junkyards in Juarez to buy toilets and things he would clean and fix to sell to the people across the border in El Paso. I used to play in those junkyards. That aroma is embedded in my brain: a mix of sewage, kerosene and oil. That’s what the Gowanus brought back to me. My childhood.”