Photoville, the temporary community of duplexes made by four-ton steel shipping containers underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, is featuring the work of 11 up-and-coming photographers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States, displayed on four-foot wooden cubes. The photographers were chosen from participants in this year’s New York Portfolio Review — a free event sponsored by The New York Times Lens blog and The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.
These mini-outdoor galleries were dubbed “emergicubes” by Laura Roumanos, a co-founder and executive producer of Photoville who also helps produce the New York Portfolio Review. She expects around 90,000 people to see these cubes by the end of the weekend, a number that would be impossible to match in any indoor gallery.
“People are finding it harder and harder to take risks,” said Ms. Roumanos, who started Photoville with her husband, Sam Barzilay, and Dave Shelly. “Some galleries and festivals look to whoever is more established or could potentially make money. We are really strong believers that we want to create an even playing field for everyone.”
The free New York Portfolio Review was created in 2013 to spur opportunities for outstanding photographers from around the world, regardless of class, race, gender, ethnic background or sexual orientation. The photographers exhibited in the emergicubes hail from Ethiopia, Kenya, Singapore, Venezuela, Columbia, Nigeria, Mexico, Egypt, Scotland, Colorado and New York.
The emergicubes feature the following projects:
Amr Alfiky: “Psychology of Hatred,” which is about his journey as an Egyptian photographer exploring religiosity, racism and hate across the United States.
Kirsten Leah Bitzer: “Jason & Rachel,” a long-term photo documentary project that follows a triple-amputee veteran and his wife as they pursue in vitro fertilization to start a family.
Cinthya Santos Briones: “Abuelas: Portraits of the Invisible Grandmothers,” a series of portraits of undocumented Mexican immigrant women who came to live in New York City in their youth and, over time, became grandmothers. The portraits are taken in their homes, focusing on how they want to show themselves in their most intimate spaces.
Adriana Loureiro Fernandez: “Paradise Lost,” which documents the political chaos that continues to upend her homeland, Venezuela.
Emily Macinnes: “The New Scots,” which explores the integration of Syrian refugees into Scotland as they are relocated to both urban centers and small remote islands.
Andres Millan: “The New Gold,” a conceptual work that explores the relationship between man and his environment using gold as a metaphor for wealth and lust.
Eloghosa Osunde: “And Now We Have Entered Broken Earth,” a conceptual story exploring familial relationships, intergenerational cycles and the effects of blood and genealogy on individual identities.
Charmaine Poh: “Room,” a series of portraits, self-portraits and letters exploring the transition from girlhood to womanhood in Singapore.
Aron Simeneh: “The Patriots Story,” a portrait series that explores the rarely told history of living Ethiopian Patriots, who proudly fought against the Italian army during the five-year occupation (1935-1941) in Ethiopia under the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Biko Wesa: “The Smallest Library in Africa,” which tells the story of Peter Otieno, a Kenyan who saw the need to address one of the main problems in his community — access to books — and prompted him to build the tiniest library in the continent.
Austin Willis: “A Beautiful Abstraction,” a series of portraits that represent his “love for fine art and photography brought together, depicting how I see the world and the people around me,” he said.
The emergicubes were curated by James Estrin and David Gonzalez, co-editors of Lens.
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