A dynamic panel of scholars and visual artists explored photography as a research-based practice from the diverse viewpoints of artists who are reshaping artistic landscapes with innovative and transformative perspectives and praxis.
Speakers: Nicole Acheampong Nadiya Nacorda Naima Green Melissa Alcena
Presented by:
Supported by:
Featuring Nicole Acheampong, Nadiya Nacorda, Naima Green and Melissa Alcena
Nicole Acheampong is an editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Previously she was an editor at The Atlantic and Aperture magazine, and her writing has appeared in both publications as well as in Art in America and the New York Review of Books, among others.
Headshot by: Alejandro Jaramillo
Nadiya I. Nacorda is an artist, educator and Taurus working with photography, video, and sound. Her work explores the nuances and entanglements of inheritance(s) while considering themes of magic, affection, identity, and (other)mothering, along with Blasian feminine interiority and subjectivity.
In her practice, she draws from her own lived experiences growing up in the United States. She also looks to the collective ancestral memories and stories passed on through, and between, the generations of her Xhosa and Philippine family while exploring broader histories of colonization and displacement.
Nadiya received her BFA in Photography & Film from VCU Arts and her MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University. Her first book A special kind of double was published in 2020 by KG Projects/Monolith Editions and can be found in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Library, The Guggenheim Museum, Ingalls Library at the Cleveland Museum of Art and more.
Her work has been exhibited at Filter Photo in Chicago, The Phoenix Art Museum, Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, RISD’s Red Eye Gallery in Providence, Center for Book Arts in New York City, and Photo Vogue Festival in Milan, among others.
Naima Green is an artist and educator who pictures individuals and communities to document their vibrant relationships to place and pleasure. Green accesses and prioritizes the nature of intimacy, safety, and self-recognition. She considers water as fluid and regenerative and presents a window into the relationship between pleasure and the complex experience of the ocean: beauty, leisure, buoyancy, and overwhelm. Oral and written histories and the archival material essential to uncovering these stories are critical to her process. By synthesizing archival research with outreach and conversation with current sitters, she frames photo-making as a continuum and her still images as kinetic, living histories.
Green has had solo shows at The Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU in Richmond, VA; Baxter Street CCNY and Fotografiska, both in NY. She has exhibited in group shows at the Museum of the City of New York, Mass MoCA, BRIC, Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Houston Center for Photography, and the Smart Museum of Art, amongst others.
Melissa Alcena is a Bahamian portrait and documentary photographer based in Nassau, Bahamas. Her work often focuses on shifting the narrative around the Caribbean, and specifically The Bahamas. Alcena flips the script by directly engaging with the people of The Bahamas, putting them front and centre, showing them and her country as complex, sophisticated, and diverse. Her strong sense of color, of bright light and deep shadow, are purely homegrown, yet unexpected and nuanced. Reaching deeply into each of her subjects, she delves far beyond the surface to reveal the true nature of her sitter and the nation.
MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora is an independently published anthology edited by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and Adama Delphine Fawundu. MFON features photographic works created by 118 African and Diasporic women artists representing 27 nations. It will soon be relaunched as an online platform. Our goal is to promote an international representative voice of women photographers from continental Africa and its diaspora.
Founded in 2011 in Brooklyn, NY, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion, which we are always striving for, by ensuring that the artists we exhibit are diverse in gender, class, and race.
In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.
By activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and highly innovative exhibition and programming environments, we join the cause of nurturing a new lens of representation.
Through creative partnerships with festivals, city agencies, and other nonprofit organizations, Photoville offers visual storytellers, educators, and students financial support, mentorship, and promotional & production resources, on a range of exhibition opportunities.
For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com
MPB transforms the way that people buy, sell and trade photo and video gear. As the largest global platform for used photography and videography equipment, MPB is a destination for everyone, whether you’ve just discovered your passion for visual storytelling or you’re already a pro.
Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB has always been committed to making gear more accessible and affordable, and helping to visualize a more sustainable future. MPB recirculates more than 485,000 used products every year, extending the life and creative potential of photo and video equipment for creators around the world.
Headquartered in the creative communities of Brooklyn, Brighton and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service.
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