This year, students turned their lenses back to the streets of New York and used walking as a form of meditative research to slow down and become aware of their bodies as multi-sensory vehicles for discovering images, stories, and materials. Students explored historical layers and hidden spaces, and were able to connect cultural geographies of the city with their own subjectivity and memory.
With a focus on how making and viewing photography can help to shape relationships with people and places in our communities, students studied the works of Tyler Mitchell and Dawoud Bey on view in Chelsea galleries, the exhibition Traveling While Black at the Schomburg Center in Harlem, a range of visual storytellers shown in public spaces around Brooklyn Bridge Park during Photoville, and SOCIAL MUSCLE REHAB by Ei Arakawa at Artists Space.
We gathered every Monday at Artists Space to hold class in Ei Arakawa’s installation to critique and refine works-in-progress, and produced a slideshow and Zine for the culminating event.
– Claudia Sohrens, Teaching Artist
Visit to the exhibition Dawoud Bey: In This Here Place, Sean Kelly Gallery, Chelsea, 2021
Student Presentations at Artists Space, 2021
Americo Rossi, Untitled, 2021, digital photography
Jaylynn Reyna, 31 Years of Glory, 2021, digital photography
Ana Vieira-Gerbracht, Untitled, 2021, digital photography
Jubilee Aponte, Untitled, 2021, digital photography
David Rodriguez, Free Rain, 2021, digital photography
Malaika Villamizar, Untitled, 2021, digital photography
Keeph Little, Artists Space construction site no.1, 2020, digital photograph [A window sill with cups, cans and cloth is visible and a crane can be seen outside of the window with the text: "New Holland" written on it. Circular green graffitti is visible on the facade of the building behind the crane.]
Keeph Little, Artists Space construction site no. 2, 2020, digital photograph [One figure is looking at the ground with their back facing the camera and another painted figure appears frontally looking down. They both are around a bright light emerging from below. A black wall covers the right half of the image.]
