VIDEO: Lauren Silberman: Party Scientist

Brooklyn-based photographer Lauren Silberman is a Party Scientist through and through. Her work explores the culture people create for themselves through celebration, ritual, and tradition in twenty-first century urban nightlife. Silberman offers glimpses into the brilliant world of wild, underground, New York counterculture : a subterranean party scene dying at the hands of real-estate development and professionally organized raves. In the Afterparty series, the artist shows the beautifully haunting chaos of the spaces in which the parties took place. These devastated counterculture landscapes show the work that went into the parties, which are often lavishly decorated microuniverses, while reminding viewers that the party's over.