Photoville

Exhibitions Tagged #History

Hip Hop at 50

The Seaport
 archive : 2023

A photographic journey through the golden age of hip-hop.

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Britain’s Stone Age Building Boom

Washington Street and Prospect Street
 archive : 2023

It’s not just Stonehenge: New discoveries reveal an era when awe-inspiring monuments were all the rage.

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Children of Indigo

Old Fulton Street and Prospect Street
 archive : 2023

Indigo cultivation helped fuel American slavery. Today, women artists and homesteaders in South Carolina are writing a new chapter in indigo’s painful history.

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New Photography 2023

The Museum of Modern Art
 archive : 2023

New Photography 2023 explores the photographic work of seven artists, all at various stages in their careers, who are united by their critical use of photographic forms and their ties to the artistic scene in the port city of Lagos (Èkó), Nigeria.

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NYC Undercover: Post-War Sound and Vision from NYPD Surveillance and WNYC Radio

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

Surveillance films of individuals and events made by the NYPD in the 1960s and ’70s are matched with vintage audio excerpts from City-owned WNYC radio programs, creating unique and dynamic new content.

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Greetings from Pandemic Island

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

A personal record of the pandemic experience on the island of Manhattan connecting the 1918-19 influenza and COVID-19 outbreaks. Spanning a century, this visual essay documents the crises by questioning issues of individual and collective responsibility but also highlights new and long existing racial and socioeconomic disparities catalyzed by the epidemic.

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Picturing Health: Highlights from the World Health Organization archives

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

On WHO’s 75th anniversary, this exhibition looks back at some of the highlights from our archives, with a focus on images and stories produced from the 1950s to the 1970s by some of our most prolific contributing photographers.

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Sowing Rice With Salt

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

Sowing Rice with Salt explores the impact of immigration on intergenerational relationships, through diptychs of archival images of immigrant parents and recreations of their children with written reflections.

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Dear Mr. Welles

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

Dear Mr. Welles investigates the impact of the radio broadcast: ‘The War of the worlds’ by Orson Welles by visualizing letters written to Orson Welles the days after the broadcast was aired.

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The Gay Space Agency

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

The Gay Space Agency confronts the American space program’s historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts, reimagining a history of the space program that celebrates queerness and highlights LGBTQIA+ role models.

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A Love Letter To Barbados

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2023

Photographic images that encapsulate the stories, the people and the powerful landscape of Barbados, the Southeastern island in the Caribbean sea.

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The Legacy of Korean “Comfort Women” and Their Continued Fight for Justice

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 2
 archive : 2022

Presented by Photoville

This work seeks to preserve the legacies and share the testimonies of Korean “comfort women,” a euphemism for women (mostly teenagers at the time) who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

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Made in Land: Spoken Memories

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2022

Presented by The 400 Years Project and Photoville

Indigenous artists Dakota Mace and Tahila Mintz engage alternative photographic processes and use soil, plants, water, and sun directly in the image-making process to tell stories about the past, present, and future of the land — stories that connect them to their ancestors, and to themselves.

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Where the Birds Never Sing

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2022

Presented by Magnum Foundation

Where the Birds Never Sing reenacts the memories of survivors from the 1979 Marichjhapi massacre in Sundarbans, West Bengal, India, weaving together perspectives on a painful history that faces slow erasure from collective memory.

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In A Time of Panthers: Early Photographs

Brooklyn Bridge Park – New Dock Street
 archive : 2022

Presented by Henson Scales Productions, Clair Oliver Gallery, SPQR Editions, and Photoville

These images serve as a time capsule of sorts — not only of my adolescence and political awakening, but also of the country whose ongoing struggle with racial inequality, police brutality, and resistance is as urgent and timely as ever.

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Reclaiming History

Washington Street and Prospect Street
 archive : 2021

Monuments examine passive relics of America’s racist past in the Confederacy, the dynamic changing of these landscapes, and who will be honored now.

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Taxi Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987

First Street Green Cultural Park
 archive : 2021

TAXI: Journey Through My Windows 1977–1987 is a portrait of the gritty chaos and community of New York in the 1970s. The book is composed of photographs captured from the driver’s seat of documentary photographer (and cab driver) Joseph Rodriguez’s taxi—including scenes of night workers getting off their shifts, children jumping through the spray of open fire hydrants in the summer, and S&M partiers leaving clubs, zipped in leather, in the early hours of the morning.

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The Port Authority Of NY&NJ: Moving The Region For A Century

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 6
 archive : 2021

A chronicle of the centennial of the Port Authority, including the creation of container shipping, the raising of a bridge to accommodate newer, larger ships, and the Port Authority’s continuing investment in port facilities that remain as vital for commerce today as they did 100 years ago.

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The Museum of the Old Colony

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn
 archive : 2020

The Museum of the Old Colony is a conceptual art installation that examines the fraught relationship between the U.S., and its modern-day colony Puerto Rico, through the use of appropriated historical imagery and objects.

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Un/Settled

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

Un/Settled is a project that explores white South Africans’ histories, privileges, and reflections on identity.

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ASMP’s 75th Anniversary

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

ASMP launches its 75th Anniversary celebration with a retrospective exhibition including iconic images from members throughout ASMP’s history–from past legends to contemporary creators.

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Family Incarceration: Never Again is Now

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

For Freedoms is excited to present artworks initially revealed as part of their fall 2018 50 State Initiative.

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Past Tense: DUMBO Before Instagram

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

Through rarely published photographs from The New York Times’s archive, viewers can travel back in time to experience the streets and buildings of Photoville’s neighborhood, before becoming the DUMBO we see and experience today.

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Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ’80s

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

Shot in the mid-to-late 80s, Joseph Rodríguez’s photographs bring us into the core of Spanish Harlem, capturing the spirit of a people that survive despite the ravages of poverty, and more recently, the threat of gentrification and displacement.

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The New Amsterdam Koffiehuis

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

The last traditional coffeehouses of Amsterdam, hand printed with the coffee that they serve.

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Viewfinder: The Art and Craft of the Film Still

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2019

An eclectic collection of film still photography, selected and submitted by members of the Society of Motion Picture Still Photographers, to show audiences the rarely seen, art and craft of film set photography.

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Past Tense: California

Annenberg Space for Photography
 archive : Photoville LA

Past Tense: California is the first project from the archival storytelling project of The New York Times.

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Ebifananyi, The Photographers Trilogy

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2018

In presentations of historical photographs from Africa, Uganda was—until recently—only mentioned in relation to photographs produced by non-Ugandans or members of the Ugandan diaspora. The first three books in the Ebifananyi series change this status quo by presenting photographs produced by Deo Kyakulagira (1940-2000), Musa Katuramu (1916-1983) and Elly Rwakoma (ca.1938).

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Federal Project 2

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2018

Over the course of 2018, and into 2019, Topic Studios has commissioned 50 artists from across the United States to explore and showcase the diversity of contemporary life in America. Federal Project No. 2 will consist of artistic pairings, where we ask world-class photographers, visual artists, musicians, etcetera, to pick a work from the vast WPA archives that speaks to them, and then make new work in response to it.

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NYC Work and Working: Photographs from the WPA Federal Writers’ Project

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2018

The Municipal Archives presents an exhibition drawn from a collection of more than 5,000 photographs taken or collected by the New York City Unit of the Federal Writers’ and Art Projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

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Priya Ramrakha – the recovered archive

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2018

Ramrakha’s iconic images defied stereotype, censorship and editorial demand, capturing key moments from segregated colonial oppression in his home in Kenya, and tying those to moments of black struggle and surprising solidarities in the US in the 1960s.

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Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2018

Idled by a newspaper strike in the summer of 1978, eight New York Times staff photographers were enlisted by the New York City parks commissioner to document a summer in the city’s parks.

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Living in the City: An Inside Look at Four Decades of Changing Housing in New York City

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2017

New York City is constantly changing. Cycles of growth, decay, and renewal have altered the bricks and mortar of its physical environment and the humans who live here. “Living in the City” vividly illustrates how the housing landscape in New York City changed during the four decades from 1961 to 2001.

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Lost Rolls America

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2017

“Lost Rolls America” is a new and unique kind of Americana archive. In the age of image saturation, this archive slows the pace of our instantaneous digital world and commemorates the role that analog photos have played in all of our lives.

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The Patriots Story

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2017

“The Patriot Story” is a portrait series that tells the rarely told stories of the living Ethiopian Patriots, who proudly fought against the Italian army during the five-year occupation (1935-1941) in Ethiopia under the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini.

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Pretty Girl Charged with Clever Swindle

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2016

These images capture a rich cross-section of the city’s population, depicting dress and social status in addition to possible criminal behavior. Focusing solely on women captured by police camera, this exhibit examines how these unique portraits offer a fascinating window into the lives of women in early 20th-century New York.

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The New Europeans

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2016

These portraits illustrate Europe’s long and complex history of immigration. Algerians came to France while their homeland was a French colony, surging in the 1954-1962 war of independence. Since the 1990s, some 40,000 Somalis fleeing civil war have settled in Sweden. Indians are among the three million South Asians who’ve come to Britain from former British colonies. About as many Turks live in Germany. They came as guest workers in the 1960s and ’70s—but stayed and had families.

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Signs of Your Identity

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2016

Generations of Canada’s First Nations forgot who they were. Languages died out, sacred ceremonies were criminalized and suppressed. These double exposure portraits explore the trauma of some of the 80,000 living survivors who remain. Through extensive accompanying interviews, they address the impact of intergenerational trauma and lateral violence, documenting the slow path toward healing.

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Finding Humanity for 75 Years

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2016
In a time of heightened tensions in society, we are focusing our lens on individuals interacting in a humane manner toward one another, or toward the viewer, as a way to counteract negative news stories. The goal is for the audience to connect to the image through an emotion — happiness, nostalgia, compassion, sadness, love — as a way to grow empathy toward others and highlight our shared stories.
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Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2015

Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down speaks of life in the Arkansas Delta forty years go and today. Black-and-white photographs made long years ago are interwoven with recent color photographs and, in turn, with a short story.

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WWII Chinese Veterans

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2015

Chinese documentary photographer Li Qiang spent nearly one month in July 2015, visiting ten places in four Chinese provinces to shoot around 50 veterans.

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A Century on the Brooklyn Waterfront

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza
 archive : 2015

The NYC Municipal Archives invites you to explore a hundred-year history of the Brooklyn waterfront through photographs dating from 1870 to 1974.

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Work In Progress On In Progress Work

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands
 archive : 2014

The photographs in Work In Progress On In Progress Work have been made in downtown Brooklyn between 2011-2014, a time when changes in the architecture of the area alone became a monumental manifestation of the rapid socioeconomic shifts in the area.

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Views From A City

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands
 archive : 2014

Inspired by the scenic vistas of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Photos.com by Getty Images has curated a stunning collection of urban photography – both archival and contemporary – to celebrate our debut exhibition at Photoville.

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Reframe: An Exploration of Memory and Nostalgia

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands
 archive : 2014

Throughout history, photography has been upheld as a source of truth.

Reframe: An Exploration of Memory and Nostalgia examines those histories which are unclear, questioning our belief in what was and re-interpreting what can be learned from the past. The show includes work from 10 international photographers and artists who are taking work created long ago and making it their own.

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Documenting the Build of Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands
 archive : 2013

Julienne Schaer’s photos of the build of the Brooklyn Bridge Park comprise a visual documentary that illustrates the transformation of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront into a world-class park.

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Raskols: The Gangs of Papua New Guinea

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 3
 archive : 2012

In “Raskols: The Gangs of Papua New Guinea,” Australian photographer Stephen Dupont presents a series of portraits that explores the world of cults, custom and tribal culture in Papua New Guinea.

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Events and Sessions Tagged #History

Jun 32023

Opening Night at PHOTOVILLE!

Join us for an evening of music, community, and beautiful visual storytelling as we celebrate how photography captures and reflects our histories.

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Jun 82022

Photoville Education Field Trips: Jeffrey Henson Scales

Featuring photographer Jeffrey Henson Scales discussing his exhibition In A Time of Panthers: Early Photographs

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Oct 172021

Delirious Visibility: The Work Of Media Literacy In The Age Of Digital Overconsumption

In the deluge of information transparency, how do we – image-makers, storytellers, content creators – become agents of a future historicity that can rage against the obsc(r)ene?

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Oct 102021

The Value Of Our Photographic Heritage: Five Perspectives

Five leading photography professionals discuss photographic heritage with PhotoWings Founder Suzie Katz.

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Oct 32021

New Authors, Old Histories

Join National Geographic photographers Philip Cheung, Kris Graves, and Daniella Zalcman in conversation with National Geographic Executive Editor Debra Adams Simmons, as they discuss their ongoing projects visualizing racist and discriminatory histories through a new lens.

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Sep 252020

Photography, History, and Systems of Power

Join us for a conversation looking back at the origins of photography–how it has been used as a tool of colonialism, and how this legacy still appears today, both culturally and institutionally.

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Sep 202020

Re-Imagining Our Family Archives

Educator Kamal Badhey and her adult and teen students, William Page, A’ssia Rai, and Valerie Zink reflect on their journey of investigating their family archives.

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Apr 282019

Past Tense: California

Past Tense: California is the first project from the archival storytelling project of The New York Times.

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Sep 142018

The Importance and How To’s of Archiving Work and Legacy

Suzie Katz, president and founder of PhotoWings, and Mary Engel, president and founder of American Photography Archives Group, will discuss the importance of archiving, the best techniques and platforms, and how to start thinking about the legacy you’ll leave behind.

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