Some Intense, Beautiful Photography Is on Display at Brooklyn Bridge Park This Summer
If you’re on the fence about what to do this weekend, by all means, remove yourself and go check out a literal fence at Brooklyn Bridge Park. For the fourth year running, the same people who organize Photoville are producing The Fence–a long, winding photography exhibition that sees the rambling chain-linked fence at Brooklyn Bridge park draped with the work of over forty photographers.
The event is all about showcasing photographers whose work directly embodies notions of “community.” To that end, there are six categories represented, spanning the fields of Nature, People, Streets, Home, Creatures, and Play.
There’s a really bold cross-section of photos on display, so here’s a glimpse at what the Fence has to offer this summer.
Andrew Avian Gard, an NYC-based photographer currently at work on a book called The New York Pigeon, will have his intense and granular portraits of our city’s favorite winged-rats on display, but his photos reveal a striking side of pigeons we probably never get to see.
Mary Beth Meehan’s work delves into the lives of undocumented immigrants. Meehan’s intent is to illuminate the unseen lives of a large segment of our nation’s population. Her “images were made inside the homes of undocumented residents in New England, with the goal of using the texture of their living spaces to make visible these human beings, and to provide a window into the very personal paths they have chosen,” according to her Photoville artist’s statement.
Maye-E Wong’s photos infiltrate one of the most secretive societies in the world: North Korea. As a staff photographer for the Associated Press, Wong has been able to infiltrate Kin Jong Un’s insular world and come back with snippets of daily life there.
Diana Alhindawi provides glimpses of Moldova’s “Bear Dance” ritual. It’s a practice dating back to the 1930s that sees all men, women and children don furry bear costumes and parade around town to wade off the previous year’s bad spirits.
Lynn Johnson’s photos showcase the experience of soldiers who have survived bomb blasts, only to come away with severe facial damage. The soldiers all wear masks to conceal their wounds, and navigate the world searching to reclaim their lives. Lynn says in her artist’s statement that “the masks, like MRIs of their psyches, make the scars of blast force visible, a first step to healing. ”
The Fence is on display at Brooklyn Bridge Park until September 20th.
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