PHOTOVILLE: Artist Talks

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Photoville opens on the 19th on September at Brooklyn Bridge Park with tons of exhibitions, events, and workshops. The Fence has been installed for a few months already, but here’s a list of artist talks and check out the exhibition lineup. Oh, there is also a beer garden.

Friday, September 20th 2013 at 7:00pm / Marvin Heiferman presents Photography Changes Everything – Curator/writer Marvin Heiferman in conversation with Pete Brook about photography’s impact in our lives, exploring how photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world.

Saturday, September 21st at 12:30pm / Anais Lopez presents Only in Burundi – Only in Burundi is a collaborative project by photographer Anais Lopez and writer Eva Smallegange. Lopez will talk about the story behind the project Only in Burundi and her voyage to discover Burundi trough all the layers of its society. She will elaborate on how this project came to be and discuss how artists can get projects published as an artist in these trying times.

Orchard Beach, The Bronx Riviera
© Wayne Lawrence

Saturday, September 21st at 1:30pm / Wayne Lawrence presents Orchard BeachOrchard Beach: The Bronx Riviera’ is a collection of engaging and beautiful portraits by Wayne Lawrence, celebrating the diversity and community of one of New York’s most popular beaches – the Bronx’ ‘Orchard Beach’. Orchard Beach might not be the most elegant place to sunbathe, but if you live in the Bronx, it’s the closest place to swim, relax on the sand, and escape the city’s oppressive summer heat. Drawn to the public beach for its less-than glamorous reputation, photographer Wayne Lawrence felt a connection to the community as soon as he began snapping pictures. His glamorous portraits of proud men and women, loving couples, and families at play challenge stereotypes associated with working-class people by focusing on universal themes such as the ties that bind and cultural pride. Whether Anglo, African American, or Latino; statuesque or stout; young or old, each individual is treated with dignity and sensitivity. Lawrence’s subjects are a community standing in defiance of popular opinion, proud to call Orchard Beach their own.

Saturday, September 21st at 2:30pm / Gerard H. Gaskin presents Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene

Gaskin, in discussion with scholar, Edgar Rivera Colon and Visionaries founder and curator, Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel, will contextualize his photographs within the ballroom scene and talk about why he was first drawn to photograph the intimate world of ball culture, the challenges of making beautiful work that is also representative of the history of a movement and the process of editing eighteen years of work into a first book.

Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene will be released in November, you can pre-order through Amazon to reserve your copy!

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© Donald Webber

Saturday, September 21st, 4:50pm / Donald Webber Interrogations

Following an exploratory trip to Chernobyl in 2005, Donald Weber soon returned to the abandoned site of the nuclear disaster and spent the next six years in Russia and Ukraine photographing the ruins of the unstoppable storm we call history. Traveling and living with ordinary people who had survived much, had survived everything, Weber began to see the modern State as a primitive and bloody sacrificial rite of unnamed Power.

Interrogations is the result of his personal quest to uncover the hidden meaning of the bloody 20th Century. Weber insistently and provocatively addresses his questions both to the living survivors and to the ghosts of the State’s innumerable victims, resurrecting their final hours by taking their point of view, and performing a kind of incantatory meditation over their private encounters with Power.

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© Martin Roemers

Saturday, September 28th at 12:30pm / Martin Roemers presents Metropolis – Martin Roemers (b. 1962, Netherlands) embarked on Metropolis in 2009 to document this process of urbanization by focusing on the world’s megacities – places with a population of more than ten million people. How can people live in cities that are so vast yet so incredibly crowded and hectic? What are the differences between these megacities and what do they have in common? How do cities and their populations evolve? For all their chaos, big cities still have a sense of humanity. It is this humanity and sense of interconnectedness that Roemers wishes to reveal in his photographs, the dynamic character of each city and the urban dwellers who make it their home.

In a discussion led by photo editor and curator, James Wellford, Roemers will present this body of work and discuss why he started the project and how it continues to evolve and grow.

© Nina Berman
© Nina Berman

Saturday, September 28th at 2:50pm / Nina Berman presents Fracking the Marcellus Shale – Documentary photographer Nina Berman (NOOR) will present images from “Fractured:the Shale Play” and engage in conversation with Alex Beauchamp of Food and Water Watch about fracking in the New York area and the greater Marcellus Shale region. Rebecca Roter, a resident of Susquehanna County, PA, will join to talk about living with and organizing around hydraulic fracturing.

© Sara Naomi Lewkowicz
© Sara Naomi Lewkowicz

Saturday, September 28th at 4:00pm / Sara Naomí Lewkowicz – Sara Naomí Lewkowicz, a graduate student studying photojournalism at Ohio University, began photographing Shane and Maggie in September of 2012. She had set out to document the difficulties Shane faced as a convicted felon trying to rebuild his life. One night, after several months of intermittently documenting the couple, the mounting tensions in their relationship exploded into violence, which Sara documented. During this artist talk, Sara will walk the audience through the events of the evening and her experience that transitioned her life and career from a student to a photojournalist and advocate against domestic abuse.

Sunday, Septemer 29th at 4:00pm / Jerry Vessuzo Presents Sunday Suppers – In conversation with Lorie Novak, artist Jerry Vessuzo will present and discuss his photo and video work which represent the dynamics of a working class family in New York City. He will also share about his current projects and zines in the making.

© Paolo
© Paolo Woods

Sunday, September 29th at 5:10pm / Paolo Woods presents State – Paolo Woods, in conversation with Fred Ritchin, discusses his recent project State in which he explores the forging of a national identity in Haiti. With writer Arnaud Robert, Woods tracked down Haitian society’s invisibles, its absurd flaws and hidden aspects. He investigated the economic elites, NGOs, the profusion of FM radios, American evangelists. Month after month, he came to realize that all the substitution powers that had come to save Haiti were actually replacing Haitian authorities. And yet, in a country whose leaders have failed ever since it was founded, the population’s desire for a State remains unaltered.