© Andrea Hernández Briceño / Emergency Fund for Journalists by the National Geographic Society. Courtesy of the Bronx Documentary Center.

4th Annual Latin American Foto Festival

Bronx Documentary Center: July 15 - August 1, 2021

The Bronx Documentary Center’s (BDC) 4th Annual Latin American Foto Festival features large-scale photographs throughout the Melrose community by award-winning photographers. Works by artists from Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and El Salvador are displayed from a variety of long-term projects focusing on social issues. As part of the festival, the BDC is holding virtual and in-person workshops, tours, and panel discussions for our online and Bronx community, home to thousands of Latino immigrants.

Two exhibitions of Venezualan photography by Andrea Hernández Briceño and Rodrigo Abd reflect on a reconnection with nature and the strength of Venezuelans amidst the oil industries’ environmental and economic degradation. Victor Peña, a Salvadorian photographer, focuses on the health and political crisis the COVID-19 virus has caused in his home country.

The BDC’s 4th annual Latin American Foto Festival reflects a historically difficult year for the region as seen through the eyes of the photographers who lived it. It also highlights the strength, resilience and innovation of inhabitants throughout Latin America.

This festival’s indoor and outdoor exhibitions take place in the BDC’s Melrose neighborhood, one of New York’s fastest growing and most dynamic communities. With installations along city sidewalks, school exteriors, in community gardens, and in both BDC galleries, the festival will be seen by thousands of residents each day. It is one of New York’s most exciting and important cultural displays of the year.

Curated by Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera. Spanish translations: Maria De La Paz Galindo. The outdoor exhibits are printed by Photoville.

We, Women: The Power of We

Empire Fulton Lawn in Brooklyn Bridge Park: July 13- September 12, 2021

Curated Walking Tour Wednesday July 21, 2021 at 6pm EST

This July, We, Women’s first public outdoor traveling exhibition, We, Women: The Power of We will launch with an exhibition in Brooklyn Bridge Park that will open later in the summer in Anchorage, Alaska, in partnership with the Anchorage Museum, and will subsequently be shown in Atlanta, Chicago, and New Orleans over the next year. The first exhibition highlights 17 impactful projects, which examine crucial issues on the minds of many Americans: immigration, education, climate change, race, motherhood and family, gun control, healthcare, religion, criminal justice reform, gentrification, sexual assault, and more.

The We, Women founders describe the exhibition: “We selected artists whose contributions all demonstrate that there is a potential for a different future for this country. These artists are all combining photography and community engagement as a way to maximize visibility and impact.” The free and accessible public exhibition is made up of 380 feet of engaging imagery that will reach hundreds of thousands of people.

We, Women: The Power of We includes contributions from a cross section of artists who are all creating socially engaged projects from different corners of the country. Arin Yoon, a military spouse based at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is trying to bridge the divide between civilian and military populations, as well as challenge media stereotypes of the military. Katie Basile’s Dear Newtok project focuses on the Yukon-Kushokwin Delta in Southwest Alaska, which is one of the first regions in the United States to experience forced relocation due to the climate crisis.

Sol Aramendi’s practice centers on collaborating with immigrant communities in New York City and highlights images documenting their daily lives, their labor, and their mutual aid circles. While Bethany Mollenkof has focused on documenting pregnant Black women throughout the South, when she found out she was pregnant for the first time shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, she turned the lens on her own personal journey.

The work will be displayed along construction fencing surrounding Empire Fulton Lawn directly under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, July 13 and will be on view through September 12, 2021. There will be a guided tour of the exhibition and related programs later in the summer. Please check the website for additional information.

© Chance DeVille, “Laying Eros on His Side // DADDY,” 2021, Archival pigment print, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

B-words

[ClampArt] Rhode Island School of Design 2021 MFA Photography Show: July 15 – 23, 2021

ClampArt is pleased to present an exhibition of the work created by the 2021 graduates of the RISD MFA Photography Program: Megan Christiansen, Chance DeVille, Camilla Jerome, Xinyi Mei, Steffanie Padilla, and Leah Zhang.

The exhibition title is derived from a three-channel video by Megan Christiansen in which she censors the word “bitch” in found clips in order to strip away the term’s spectacle, amplify its context, and question the harmlessness of its use on network television. Christiansen states: “There are different ‘frequencies’ associated with the word bitch, and the multiplicities of meaning in this word are reliant on its circulation and performance. Who is speaking? Who is performing this word, and to whom?”

The voices of the 2021 graduates are multifarious; differently gendered and non-gendered; in addition to international (both geographically and culturally). The simultaneous and sometimes contradictory viewpoints reflect and represent the wider world that is referenced and represented in these artworks, but is also the world into which these young artists are now launched.

All of these artists have been guided in critiques and thesis committee meetings by a rich and diverse group of faculty and guests. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and Alexandra Strada have led the graduate group critique. Students benefited from individual and guest critiques from artists Paul Pfeiffer, Sharon Lockhart, Yasafumi Nakamori, Erin O’Toole, Joshua Citarella, among others; and gallerist Brian Paul Clamp (ClampArt).

All graduates have completed a photobook and thesis essay—now part of the RISD photo archive, which includes work by such former graduates as Bill Burke, Talia Chetrit, Jim Dow, Linda Connor, Emmet Gowin, David Benjamin Sherry, and Francesca Woodman, among others.

Learn more here.

Events:

Opening Reception: Donavon Smallwood: 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner

Aperture: July 21 (5-8pm (EST))

Baxter St Camera Club of New York 126 Baxter St New York, NY 10013

Join Aperture for the opening reception of Donavon Smallwood: 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner, hosted by Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, this exhibition presents the work of Smallwood who was awarded the 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize for his series Languor.

With his meditative black-and-white project Languor, a series of photographs taken in New York’s Central Park, Donavon Smallwood envisions Black tranquility at the center of the urban landscape. As Mikelle Street writes in Aperture, Smallwood’s body of work was inspired by The Lost Neighborhood under New York’s Central Park, an eight-minute documentary released on Vox in 2020 that tells the story of Seneca Village, a nineteenth-century African American community located on land that is now Central Park. Interested in how the public space was stripped from that community, Smallwood intended to create a narrative of Black life distant from the demands and distortions of the news cycle. Smallwood’s images, with their clarity and precision, invite viewers to consider Black people in natural settings connected to their own cultural history. As Smallwood himself affirms, “When you see Black people just being themselves, that’s what the art is.”

But Still, It Turns Conversations—Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and David Campany

ICP: July 21, 2021 (6PM – 7PM ) ONLINE

Photographer Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and ICP’s managing director of programs, David Campany discuss his project All My Gone Life, a series of photographs that juxtapose contemporary images made by the artist across the United States with archival negatives from press photographers, film sets, and photographic studios to create an American landscape that is both fantastical and visceral.

This program is free with a suggested donation of $5. Register and learn more here.

Art History from Home: Dawoud Bey: An American Project

Whitney Museum of American Art: Thurs, July 22, 2021 (12 pm)

Online, via Zoom

This series of online talks by the Whitney’s Joan Tisch Teaching Fellows highlights works in the Museum’s collection and current exhibitions to illuminate critical topics in American art from 1900 to the present. During each thirty-minute session, participants are invited to comment and ask questions through a moderated chat for a fifteen-minute Q&A following the talk. Sessions are available live only, Tuesdays at 6 pm and Thursdays at 12 pm, but topics and speakers do periodically repeat. Check back here for more sessions added regularly.

This session explores the work of photographer Dawoud Bey, who uses his camera to visualize communities and histories that have been underrepresented. From his tender and perceptive portraits to more recent work that takes a historic turn, Bey’s images pose existential questions that suggest not just a kind of personal expression but the power and possibility of bearing witness through photography.

Learn more and register here.