The best of NY's popup photo festival
New York City’s Photoville, under the Brooklyn Bridge and along the waterfront, turns shipping containers into art spaces to showcase an incredible array of photography from Sept. 21-25, 2016. The five-year-old popup festival, organized by United Photo Industries also plays host to a series of lectures, talks and evening screenings in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Here’s a look at the diverse work on display.
Breaking Point is an exhibition of work by the photographers of Kamoinge, a New York collective of African-American photographers focused on documenting daily life in Black America. The work presented highlights a country amidst a struggle for real change during a time of seemingly constant news of police shootings of African-Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement. Members of the collective include Eli Reed, Radcliffe Roye and Russell Frederick.
Flower Power
French photographer Sophia Gamand’s Flower Power series seeks to challenge people’s perceptions of pit bulls as dangerous animals. A perception that leads to an estimated 1 million of the breed being euthanized each year. Gamand uses baroque esthetics to create whimsical, but soulful portraits of shelter dogs awaiting adoption.
For more on this project:
Sophia Gamand Photography, #PitBullFlowerPower
On The Street with Bill Cunningham
This exhibit is a celebration of the work of the preeminent fashion street photographer Bill Cunningham, who died on June 25, 2016, by The New York Times. The fashion photographer Cunningham was a legend not just for his photography, but his perpetual blue work man’s jacket he always wore and traveling the streets of New York City by bicycle in search of his subjects for 50 years.
Photo: (L-R) Contributing Fashion Editor for Vogue.com Lynn Yaeger and The New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham watch a model on the runway at the Suno spring 2013 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Milk Studios on September 7, 2012 in New York City.
Family: Bringing a shared sense of humanity into the public eye
Chris Hondros, a Getty Images staff photographer, was killed on assignment in Libya on April 20, 2011. He was known for his hard-hitting, but compassionate photography in many of the world’s hot spots. This show brings together the work of Hondros and the photographers, whose work has been supported by the Chris Hondros Fund: Daniel Berehulak, Andrea Bruce, Bryan Denton, Kevin Frayer, Tomás Munita.
Photo: Two Iraqi girls in Baghdad look at American staff sergeant Nick Gibson in Baghdad, June 21, 2007.
Rewilding Pandas in Chine
National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale has spent a considerable amount of time over three years photographing giant pandas in China and conservation efforts on their behalf. Selected images for her her photo essay published in the August 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine are on display at Photoville.
Political Theatre
Mark Petersen’s dramatic, high-contrast black and white images cleverly portray our American political scene as one of “political theatre.” Petersen has spent two years photographing the candidates seeking to become the next president of the United States with his unique eye. The photographer describes his purpose as “using my camera to cut through the staging of these moments and reveal the cold, naked ambition for power.”
Petersen’s work will soon be available as a book published by Steidl.
Photo: Former first lady and former secretary of state Hillary clinton signs copies of her book Hard Choices in East Hampton, August 16, 2014.
Flint is a Place
A lot has been heard about tFlint, Michigan and its water crisis this year. Flint is a Place is a cross-platform documentary project by photographer and filmmaker Zackary Canepari. Canepari highlights the worst and best of Flint through the story of two sisters Claressa, an Olympic boxing champion, and Briana, a teenage mother.
Photo: One-year-old Hazel Eilber being given a bath by her grandmother Sabrina. Sabrina bathes Hazel only in bottled water because she fears that even touching the tap water could make her sick.
America, Point Blank
Guns in America has long been a hot topic. In recent years, the death toll has risen dramatically from mass shootings. The images produced by several photographers and presented by Fovea Exhibitions examines the questions, “How did we get here? How do Americans stop the bloodbath?’
The Lost Rolls
Every photographer who has ever worked with film is familiar with lost rolls, held onto and forgotten... never developed. Photojournalist Ron Haviv finally processed more than 200 rolls, some of which sat around for 25 years before hitting the developer. These “ruined” and aged images take on a nostalgic quality revealing forgotten moments impacted by time and circumstance. For Haviv, the images have become artifacts.
Haviv has launched the project, Lost Rolls America, at Photoville to create a national archive of such images by processing and scanning film from the public for free.
Photo: Lions Cemetery. Sarajevo, Bosnia, 2004
Women on the Outside
This multimedia installation created by a group of photographers Zara Katz, Lisa Riordan Seville, Zora J. Murff, Michael Krisch, Mark Hansen and Dalit Shalom brings attention to the plight of women who have loved ones in prison. Incarceration impacts not just those behind bars, but the family and loved ones on the outside seeking to maintain family and connection. Their stories are told in a compelling way and open a window into the women’s lives.
Photo: Kristal Bush has visited loved ones in Pennsylvania prisons for 22 years. Her first visit was to see her father when she was 5-years-old. She now owns a van service that transports families to visit prisons across the state.
Jerome Avenue Workers Project
Life on Jerome Avenue in The Bronx is the subject for the photographers of The Bronx Photo League. Timeless black and white portraits capture the working class people who live and work there facing changing times as the area is potentially threatened by development.
Photo: Bella Santiago Rodriguez, a 21-year-old native Brazilian, hangs around the Flat Fix Shop, where she’s made a new group of friends that she calls family. She came from Brazil because of family issues.
Ebola Through the Lens
The intimate stories of the people on the front lines of the Ebola crisis in Africa, both those who toiled to save lives and the people directly impacted by illness and death, are told in this exhibition.
#OrlandoStrong
Wayne Lawrence’s Orlando Strong was published by National Geographic in June 2016. Lawrence spent a week in Orlando gathering the stories of a community, battered by the Orlando massacre at the Pulse Nightclub, but not defeated.
The people in Lawrence’s portrait series all spoke of “love, unity and hope.”