2024 Annual Photoville Festival
Brooklyn Bridge Park and throughout New York City
June 1 – 16, 2024
The 2024 Annual Photoville Festival, which displays 85 outdoor photography exhibits throughout New York City, has returned for another year. On display through June 16, this year’s exhibitions are dedicated to fostering empathy and understanding throughout New York’s communities by elevating stories of adversity, heartbreak, hope, joy, and compassion.
Along with the iconic location in the Emily Warren Roebling Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Photoville has pop-up exhibitions in The South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, Travers Park in Jackson Heights, and the Alice Austen House in Staten Island, among other locations.
The Brooklyn Bridge Park flagship location overlooks the illustrious Brooklyn Bridge and the lower Manhattan skyline, reminding visitors of the urban context of the exhibition. Peppered throughout the plaza, carefully curated photography exhibitions pay tribute to topics including New York City’s public radio station, the many facets of the American Muslim experience, the communities located at the very end of subway lines, and resilience in the face of climate change. These pop-up exhibitions combine skillful photography with a strong social message, sharing with New York the stories of real people and real institutions in the city.
“End of the Line,” a composite portrait of New York City through the eyes of 44 communities located at the final stops of the subway, is among the most striking collections. The photographer, Taylor Chapman, spent his Saturdays for 10 years riding various subway lines to their last stops and exploring the neighborhoods.
Through shooting 70,000+ photos over more than a decade, I’ve captured parts of New York before they disappear,” Chapman said in his artist statement. “EOTL is about celebrating what Mayor David Dinkins called the ‘glorious mosaic’ of NYC: how glorious, strange, multifaceted, and unfathomable the city is.”
Marvin Joseph, staff photographer for The Washington Post, joined Chapman in illustrating the connectivity of humanity through his photography. His portrait collection, “Beautiful Strangers,” reveals how there are no strangers in the world through its imagery of how Black people are perceived. He depicts a quartet of dancers, a smoker doused in red lighting, a woman on a couch. Located right in the middle of the show, Joseph’s work is eye-catching and provocative.
Visitors who venture further from the water will come across shipping containers hiding more photographic treasures, like Ann Hermes’ “Local Newsrooms” collection. A testament to the 2,000 local newspapers that have shuttered since 2005 and the increasingly partisan news landscape, Hermes’ work captures newspaper morgues, harried journalists, and the last remaining ethnic publications as they fight to tell stories that matter.
From the last survival local newspapers to the communities that live two hours down the subway line, Photoville brings a spirit of grittiness and connectivity to Brooklyn Bridge Park, which lies in a touristy, transportation dessert. Standing at the Emily Warren Roebling Plaza, looking up at the mammoth glass structures that make up Lower Manhattan can feel isolating. Photoville reminds guests that each locale is part of a vast network that makes up New York City, from the end of the J train to the center of Times Square.
