Down on the East River, along the Brooklyn coast, lies Photoville, New York City’s largest annual photography event, open and free to the public now through September 20, 2015. Conceptualized as a village nestled along the Dumbo waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Photoville provides a singularly original way of experiencing photography.
Featuring 65 shipping containers repurposed as indoor and outdoor galleries, Photoville also offers nighttime projection programs curated by Getty Images, The New York Times Lens Blog, PBS’ POV series and National Geographic; panel discussions and artist lectures; PhotoShelter professional development seminars; hands-on workshops; tents with vendors, publishers and gear demonstrators; and a beer garden with a range of food vendors by Smorgasburg.
Photoville kicked off opening night festivities with Down & Dirty, a night of music photography and street art curated by Janette Beckman. Beckman, who has photographed everyone from the Sex Pistols to Run DMC, brought together 550 photographs from more than 45 photographers (including Mick Rock, Roberta Bayley, Adrian Boot, Danny Clinch, Bob Gruen, Mel D Cole, Michael Putland and Jonathan Mannion) for a slideshow that brought us back to an earlier time in the world.
Also: Events | New York Art Book Fair 2015
Beckman observes, “These photographs really document people’s lives as they are. These are people who get up in the morning and live their lives just likje everyone else. For me, photography is like painting in the eighteenth century; it should document reality so you can look at it and go, ‘Oh shit!’ These photographers had a lot of freedom and access, back in the days. They could hang out with the band and capture moments of their lives.”
Beckman describes a Jill Furmaonvsky’s photograph of Amy Winehouse backstage as a joyous moment, one that stands in stark contrast with our knowledge of the pain that ultimately took the singer’s life. The power of the photograph is its ability to show us things we might not otherwise see, were it not for the passion and dedication of the photographer.
Photoville reflects this total commitment to the art. Organized by Sam Barzilay, Laura Roumanos and Dave Shelley, who comprise the small but ambitious Brooklyn-based United Photo Industries (UPI), Photoville presents some of the most powerful work in contemporary photography today. This year’s indoor exhibitions include Eugene Richards’ Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down, shot on the impoverished Arkansas Delta region; Radcliffe Roye’s When Living is a Protest, on everyday struggles for racial equality; ; Daniel Berehulak’s Pulitzer Prize winning Scenes From The Ebola Crisis, comprising photos shot in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea; and Debi Cornwall’s Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play, Gitmo on Sale on the absurdities of everyday life at the Guantanamo Bay prison complex.
Outdoor installations including five large exhibitions by National Geographic, featuring the work of Robert Clark, Lynn Johnson, Peter Muller, Stephanie Sinclair; Matt Black’s Geography of Poverty, featuring images of some of America’s poorest towns; Devin Allen’s recent work, which offers an intimate look at life in Baltimore during and after the protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray, curated by Olivier Laurent of TIME LightBox.
Janette Beckman’s Down & Dirty will remain on view as an exhibition, in its own shipping container, throughout Photoville. The container features The Mash Up, a collaboration with Cey Adams and Andrea von Bujoss (aka Queen Andrea), who have painted on top of Beckman’s larger-than-life prints of Chuck D and LL Cool J, which are installed outside the double-stacked containers.
Photoville will also include nightly outdoor projection shows, interactive programming, panels, lectures, and workshops. In the few years since its inception in 2012, Photoville has become the largest annual photographic event in New York City, and one of the most attended photographic events nationwide. Last year Photoville drew over 71,000 visitors, industry professionals and general public alike—an unparalleled opportunity for photographers to have their work seen. No other museum, gallery or festival exposes work by such a wide range of artists and photojournalists to so many people in so little time, for free.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
