WE ARE QUEENSBRIDGE​

 

In the 1930s, New York City began building public housing to provide low and middle-income families with affordable homes.  Ninety years later, the City's public housing is synonymous with poverty, drugs, gangs and violence.

 

In 2019, I was an artist in residence at the Queensbridge Housing Project in Long Island City, New York - the nation's largest public housing project with over 7,000 residents.  I taught photography to over 150 youth, seniors and English language learners - people eager to share their life experiences, hard-working parents and grandparents and young people with dreams and aspirations.  

​

At the end of the residency, I curated a public community-wide exhibition of over 130 large-scale photographs made by my students, selecting the photographs to be exhibited and the manner in which they were to be shown.  Entitled "We Are Queensbridge," the exhibition was hung on lampposts throughout the Queensbridge Houses and the fence bordering neighboring Queensbridge Park.  Together, the images portrayed a diverse, compassionate and sympathetic community striving to overcome the challenges confronting public housing.

​

​

​