Featuring: Las Fotos Project, A VOICE, Club Balam
In the space between marching and marketing, stands the teenage girl, absorbing multiple and conflicting messages coming at her from all directions. She is as confused as the rest of us about what the future holds. Truth be told, while there are finally significant conversations and actions being taken to address historic gender inequities, Disney, Barbie and the rest of the plastic toy and cheap clothing merchants have deeply colonized our minds, defining for most young girls what a princess is and does long before she owns her first pink dress.
Yet for all that product ‘pink’ being pushed on her, she instinctively knows that she is being targeted in problematic ways. How do we know that? Since our founding more than 20 years ago, the Lower Eastside Girls Club has held an annual Gowns For Girls / Prom Dress giveaway. We receive hundreds of brand new high-end gowns every year from a few generous manufacturers, and promote the event as a way to save money for more pressing needs, like college tuition. And every year, at the end of a high energy day of pure and free fashion joy, we’d notice a curious fact: left on the racks after all the other dresses were tried on and ultimately sent home with a satisfied ‘customer’, were a few lonely pink dresses. Clearly not deemed appropriate prom wear, they held lots of promise as costumes and props for a zillion zany events: community street fairs and marches, reconstructed fashion items, fantasy photo shoots. When we took the ‘pink’ to the streets, we got noticed. The power of pink worked for parties and protests, art and activism.
The surreal, whimsical photos of girls in frilly, pink gowns—New York City girls sweeping the streets with a taxi cab in the background, or the Chiapas-based Maya girls leaving their cornfields with hoes slung over their shoulders—reminds us less of a scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs than they do of a staged shot from the oeuvre of the playful work of the Argentinian photographer Marcos Lopez, or the moodily weird fashion shoots of Deborah Turbeville, which is exactly the point. “The Power of Pink” is a photography project that demands young photographers pay attention to the politics of daily life.
In this photography series, we are excited to share the work of the young women photographers from Las Fotos Project in Los Angeles, California, and of A VOICE (Art Vision & Outreach In Community Education) from the Two Eagle River School on the Flathead Reservation in Montana.
Organizations
-
The Lower Eastside Girls Club
The Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) supports young women and gender-expansive youth of color throughout New York City in leveraging their inner power — to shape a better future for themselves, their community, and the world. Through free, year-round, innovative programming, we connect young people with their passions, celebrate their curiosity, and channel their creative energy. Together, we are building a just and equitable future filled with joy, power, and possibility.
Every year, hundreds of youth ages 10–23 visit our facility where we offer after-school, weekend, and summer programming in STEM, arts, digital media, sound, wellness, civic engagement and leadership. Our 35,000 square foot facility includes a maker shop for coding and robotics, an environmental studies lab for STEM exploration, the Alphabet City Art School for visual arts and crafts, the Center for Media and Social Justice for digital media, film, and photography, the sound studio for music production and our radio station/podcast, WGRL (Where Girl Radio Lives), a design studio for fashion and material arts, an expansive and productive rooftop farm, a full culinary education center, and a 64-seat dome planetarium.
The Power of Pink
Featuring: Various Artists
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
Explore other locations and exhibitions nearby
Related Events
The Power of Pink
In this photography series we are excited to share the work of the young women photographers from Club Balam in Chiapas, Mexico, Las Fotos Project in Los Angeles, California, A VOICE-(Art Vision & Outreach In Community Education) from the Two Eagle River School on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and work from our own photography program.
Learn More
