As I entered Photoville in Emily Roebling Plaza under the Brooklyn Bridge, I had a tingle of anticipation as I spotted one of the greatest photographs of recent memory, Ami Vitale’s heartrending image of the last moments of the last White Rhino, Sudan.
Looking at the image, with the incongruity of the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge above it, was striking. This image invokes compassion between the species that occupy this planet. Sudan didn’t deserve to be the last of his kind. This wildlife officer gave of himself so we could all share the grief of a devastating loss.
National Geographic Magazine photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale‘s work illuminates the unsung heroes and communities working to protect wildlife and finding harmony in our natural world. Ami is the founder and executive director of Vital Impacts, a nonprofit that uses art and storytelling to support grassroots conservation and the storytellers who focus on the most important issues of our planet.
Photoville has an effect on me. As I walk through, I realize this year’s exhibit feels more local and less international. There are few images of war or strife. Nothing from the Universities. I’m surprised.
When I spot Sam Barzilay, co-founder of the event, outside the artist’s tent, we speak about that. With everything going on, I expected more war photographs. Sam said they decided to keep it at a different level, including the exhibits AMERICAN MUSLIM EXPERIENCE and L’DOR VADOR, and focusing on more local stories.
Syed Yaqeen, a Bangladeshi-born, Queens-raised photographer with over 15 years of experience, initially focused on editorials and fashion. I listened to Syed describe his exhibit, AMERICAN MUSLIM EXPERIENCE, saying he wanted to show the daily life of his subjects in America, and their experiences as citizens of our diverse country.
“In the symphony of American life, the nuances and harmonies of the Muslim community often remain unheard. “American Muslim Experience” seeks to change that, inviting viewers to embark on a visual journey that transcends stereotypes, embraces authenticity, and celebrates the kaleidoscope of experiences within the American Muslim diaspora. The vision behind this project is to challenge preconceived notions and foster a deeper understanding of American Muslims. By capturing authentic moments of daily life, struggles, celebrations, and introspection, this documentary project aims to reveal the shared humanity that unites us all while celebrating the unique stories that make each individual a vital note in the composition of our collective narrative.”
Rachel Wisniewski’s project L’DOR VADOR (From Generation to Generation) captures the coming-of-age experience of Jewish youth through the quintessentially Jewish-American ritual of sleep-away camp. Anti-Semitic attacks reached a record high in 2023. The last Holocaust survivors will soon die. And, Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population. With the lowest birth rates and highest inter-marriage rates of all religious groups in the U.S., there has never been more pressure to preserve and sustain Judaism as a culture, ethnicity, and religion.
I was proud of Photoville for sharing a different view of these two cultures and promoting the good not the bad.
My vote for the hardest hitting exhibit at this year’s Photoville has to go to “THE YEAR AFTER A DENIED ABORTION” by Stacy Kranitz. ProPublica commissioned Kranitz to follow one woman for a year after she was denied an abortion for a life-threatening pregnancy. With Roe V. Wade overturned, Tennessee bans abortion in nearly all circumstances. But once the babies are here, the state provides little help. At 26 weeks, Mayron began to bleed heavily and was rushed to the hospital. Her daughter Elayna was born weighing less than 2 pounds and unable to breathe on her own. Mayron lost her uterus in the surgery that saved her life.
The next year would reveal many of the gaps in Tennessee’s social safety net. “They forced me, basically, to have a child,” she said of the state after the abortion ban. But then, “They didn’t help me take care of that child.”
The photographs are dramatic and story-telling, everything that a documentary photographer should convey in the work. It is a damning story against these draconian laws.
Now with the heavy story out of the way, the most fun exhibit was “PERCEPTION & REPRESENTATION: REFRAMING MODERNITY” where Dutch photographers recreate the styles of Rembrandt and his contemporaries with prominent models of color.
Amsterdam is a diverse city but you wouldn’t know that from Rembrandt’s work. I would agree. I studied Rembrandt’s works in college and Amsterdam is a city I continue to visit. (See THREE DAYS IN AMSTERDAM on my site).
The Dutch Masters Revisited exhibition is giving some of the many people of color a face. Curator Jörgen Tjon A Fong went in search of 17th and 18th-century Dutch people of color and asked contemporary Dutch well-known personalities to pose as historical figures. Photographers Ahmet Polat, Humberto Tan, Milette Raats, and Stacii Samidin portrayed in their own style, inspired by Rembrandt and his contemporaries, as today’s Dutch masters.
This Dutch Masters Revisited became part of the exhibition The Portrait Gallery of the 17th Century in 2019: Thirty large seventeenth-century group portraits from the Amsterdam Collection (supplied by Amsterdam Museum and Rijksmuseum) that were on display at Hermitage Museum Amsterdam. The exhibition sparked an international debate about the use of the expression The Golden Age. That term was used to describe the period in the 17th and 18th century in which Holland was economically successful through overseas trade and colonization. The Amsterdam Museum decided not to use the term anymore.
So it is another successful Photoville and kudos must go out to founders Laura Roumanos, Sam Barzilay and Dave Shelley and the entire team behind them. Watching the evolution of this showcase of the photographis arts has been nothing short of astounding. COVID did not stop their progress and even enhanced their reach. Seeing the most current version is at the top of the list. It truly is a showcase of photography.
Eugene Richards has always been one of my heroes. I studied his work while in college and met him in the early 90s while working for the Associated Press, almost a dream come true. At Photoville, he has drawn from his latest book, In This Brief Life (2023), a collection of more than 50 years of mostly unseen photographs – from his earliest pictures of sharecropper life in the Arkansas Delta to the present.
In the midst of a fraught political climate – pandemic, rise in gun violence, polarized politics – Richards found himself meditating on what it means to make socially conscious documentary photography today. Upon his son’s suggestion, he began to post his photographs on social media, sifting through dusty binders of contact sheets – photographs taken for a community newspaper, on assignment for magazines, as a volunteer for human rights organizations, when wandering alone and at home with his family – and scanning the negatives.
The book is a cross section of life most of us have never seen, let alone shared in photographs. It is a body of work that everyone needs to see. He ventured where few of us had the courage to witness. Don’t miss it.
