Black Shutter Productions
Behind the Shutter is a live visual storytelling event that gives Black Shutter Productions’ guests an opportunity to talk about their work and their process of making images.
Speakers: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn Keith Major Melissa Alexander Jeffrey Henson Scales
Location: Harbor View Lawn – Pier 1
Number 19 on the official photoville map
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Presented by:
Black Shutter Productions is a collaboration of Idris Talib Solomon and Leslie Ogoe
Black Shutter Productions is a New York City-based production company helping brands and organizations communicate to a wider, more diverse audience. We believe everyone has a story that wants to be heard — but there is a need for more diverse storytelling. Our podcast gives artists the platform to share their work and experiences as Black creators. It is a space designed for inspiration, motivation, and celebration.
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a documentary photographer based in New York City. Her work has been supported with grants and fellowships from the International Women’s Media Foundation, Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies, and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. She is a four-time recipient of the Community Arts Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her projects have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC, and OkayAfrica, among other publications. She has curated exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Port Authority of NY/NJ, and has given talks on her photography at Yale University, New York University, Howard University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She was recently an artist-in-residence at the Waaw Centre for Art and Design in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Barrayn is the founder and coeditor of Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.
Photo Credit: Alex Bershaw
New York City native Keith Major‘s love for photography and art began in his pre-teen years when he attended after-school programs at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Pratt Institute. Major specialized in photography at New York’s highly regarded High School of Art and Design, and after graduation, attended the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology, where he earned his BFA. With more than 30 years of experience and a roster of A-list clients including Sony Music, Colgate-Palmolive, Essence, and Cosmopolitan, Major has achieved his childhood dreams and established a sterling reputation as one of New York’s most talented and productive commercial photographers. He is currently the photo director for EBONY.com
Growth and vulnerability form the foundation of Melissa Alexander’s work. In particular, she focuses on the inter-relational intimacy that exists within the African diaspora, encouraging the model and viewer to lay down their guard. Her work is her protest — her rebellion — her chance to strengthen and control the Black narrative that has been washed, overlooked, and undervalued. Currently, she is working on projects related to the evolution of the Black girl into the Black woman.
Jeffrey Henson Scales is a photographer, New York Times photo editor, and a New York University professor of photojournalism. He began making photographs at age 11, after his parents gave him 30 years’ worth of LIFE Magazine and a Leica camera. He has since spent more than five decades as a documentary and commercial photographer.
His documentary photographs have been exhibited at museums throughout the United States, and have appeared in numerous photography magazines, books, and anthologies. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the City Museum of New York, the George Eastman House, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Weisman Museum of Art, the Museum of Art at Newfields, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Henson Scales is also an award-winning editor who curates The New York Times photography column, Exposures, and is co-editor of the annual Year in Pictures special section.
His ongoing project is entitled The Archive Project, in which his archiving team is digitizing and cataloging over 50 years of his personal and professional photographs, including images from the upcoming book In A Time of Panthers: Early Photographs.
Photo Credit: Chad Batka
Black Shutter Productions is a New York City-based production company helping brands and organizations communicate to a wider, more diverse audience. We believe everyone has a story that wants to be heard — but there is a need for more diverse storytelling. Our podcast gives artists the platform to share their work and experiences as Black creators. It is a space designed for inspiration, motivation, and celebration.
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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