



Featuring: Nicole Ximena Berg, Lou Blum Wallach, Charlotte Bridges, Camille D’Silva, Calix Dela Santa, Eileen Gregory, Parker Iooss, Josephine Jackowska, Mia Jacoby, Hanna Joulaee, Kings Kwadjo-Peprah, Rue Mahon, Daniel McGuire, Isaac Mengistu, Amélie Miller, Lucas Miranda, Mason Patience, Joaquin Patricio-Hughes, Renaissance Radoniqi, Hayden Richardson, Arber Rugovac, Hazel Seki, Brooke Sherman, Alvaro Sodi, Kianny Urena
This project is rooted in the belief that when students slow down and work with their hands, photography becomes a joyful antidote to an over-reliance on technology. In a culture that emphasizes curated images for social media, students crave experiences that feel tactile and unexpected.
Contemporary image-making values speed, polish, and volume, often producing images without reflection. For students born into this digital age, analog film and alternative processes offer a counterbalance. In our classroom and darkroom, we reframe photography as physical and experimental, where process matters as much as outcome.
#FilmIsNotDead is a student exhibition of analog and alternative photographic work by NYC public high school students at The Beacon School in Manhattan. Using 35mm film, cyanotype, anthotype, platinum/palladium, chlorophyll printing, and hybrids, students create images that are slow and tactile. These works are not nostalgic; they reclaim time and intention in a culture of immediacy.
Connecting to the #FilmIsNotDead movement, the exhibition engages with the irony of a social media driven movement critiquing digital culture. Students celebrate photographic tradition while pushing contemporary photography, exploring the tension between analog and digital spaces.
Organizations
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The Beacon School
The Beacon School has been created from a sense of great hope.
We believe in the boundless potential of every student to think critically and lead with empathy. Grounded in inquiry-based learning, performance assessment, artistic expression, and interdisciplinary exploration, our vibrant and inclusive community fosters both curiosity and civic responsibility.
We are committed to cultivating a joyful, intellectually rich environment where students grapple with a diverse plurality of perspectives and meaningful collaboration thrives. Our students engage deeply in a liberal arts, college preparatory curriculum that transcends traditional boundaries—nurturing our ability to reflect, question, and connect ideas across disciplines and communities.
Beacon offers thoughtful, challenging, and deep coursework in mathematics, the physical and natural sciences, language, literature, writing, history, and the social sciences—all with various pathways to achieve a depth of study and academic mastery. Central to its program, the Beacon School also offers ever-expanding opportunities for students to examine themselves and the world through the visual and performing arts—allowing them to fully engage in the creative process, make meaning, and inspire.
Rooted in the best progressive principles in education, we emphasize depth of understanding over rote memorization and superficial coverage of a vast breadth of content. Our demanding performance assessments require students to ask original questions, conduct research and develop and defend their own dissertations to a panel of evaluators.
Guided by our core values—Humanity, Inquiry, Peace, Democracy, Justice, and Intellect—Beacon empowers students to define their own sense of purpose, care for one another, and make meaningful contributions to a complex and interconnected world.
Our vision is to inspire resilient, creative, compassionate, and intellectually fearless graduates who live examined lives and participate fully in our democracy.
We strive to be a haven for groups who have been traditionally excluded from a high quality education, and welcome all regardless of ability, race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, and immigration status.
We hope that the meanings and successes created at our school will continue to stir and guide the people who pass through our doors.
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Photoville
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
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PhotoWings
PhotoWings believes that photography has the power to influence the world. As such, we invest in strategic collaborations and programs that help make photography better understood, created, utilized, seen and saved. We also have a rich archive with hundreds of hours of original interviews and partner presentations from both within and outside the photo world, as well as curricula, tool kits, resources and community activities. We believe that meaningful engagement with photography can foster deep thinking, communication and help people better understand and navigate the world.
PhotoWings has been a proud partner of the Eddie Adams Workshop since 2015, and of Catchlight and Photoville since 2017.
#FilmIsNotDead
Featuring: Various Artists
Curated by: Amy Flatow
Locations
View Location Details Download a detailed map of this location Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza1 Water St
Brooklyn, NY 11201
This location is part of Brooklyn Bridge Park
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The views and opinions expressed in this exhibit are those of the exhibition artists and partners and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Photoville or any other participants and partners of the Photoville Festival.
Recipient of the 2026 Photoville & PhotoWings Educator Exhibition Grant.

