Through Our Eyes: A Collective Portrait of Caracas

Featuring: Students of MiRA

This exhibition is two-fold: touching on the themes of representation, gender-based issues, documentary storytelling and collaborative practices. The work is a selection of images created through our Girls Empowerment programming, originally launched in 2020 with Lexi Parra and Natalie Keyssar. For young women in Caracas, who are affected by their country’s crisis and cultural machismo, agency over their own representation is crucial.

Our community portraits made in pop-up studio activities and single images of student work tell a collective narrative.

The photo booth studio challenges the exclusivity of photography by creating studios in public spaces. The transfer of authorship in framing these communities from outsiders, to the next generation of women, emphasizes the importance of insider perspectives, and questions the radical potential of the photograph and practice of photography as tools to teach about agency, identity, and autonomy. Since our first community photo booth, we saw the power and potential of these young women to not only create their own archive of portraiture, but to also redefine how they interact with and see themselves and their communities making it a crucial part of the exhibition.

The communities we teach in are victims of extreme poverty, gang and State violence, and generational trauma. Yet, the work our students create tells a much needed under-visibilized reality. As a collection of images, this series provides a challenge to stereotypical depictions of Venezuela barrios, producing images that emphasize family, style, pride, and shared values, challenging existing stereotypes of poverty and violence, and prompts the question: how can photography be constructive instead of extractive?

From our experience, women are the backbone of these communities, doing all they can to keep their families and communities together despite the country’s crisis. The young women we work with know this all too well and their visual work reflects that. At a critical time in their lives, the stories they tell show that not all is lost. They deserve to be shown, shared, and celebrated.

Organizations

Project MiRA

Founded in 2018 by Lexi Parra, Project MiRA (Look) is an alternative educational initiative, bringing mobile photography workshops to vulnerable youth in Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas. Considering the unprecedented crisis in Venezuela, many kids do not get to experience their youth. Through free community workshops only made possible thanks to community and volunteer collaboration, Project MiRA creates a space for discussion, critical analysis and visual creation. Our intention is for kids to express themselves freely and find their voice. Throughout these workshops, youth not only learn photography, but how to visually represent themselves, their neighborhoods and larger social issues.

Over the past five years, we have taught over 600 students and collaborated with the Davis Peace Prize (2018), Aperture Foundation, featuring student work in Susan Meiselas’ book Learn to See (2020), Canon USA (2021), the Bronx Documentary Center (2022-2023), and the US Embassy (2023).
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
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.
NYC Parks

NYC Parks is the steward of more than 30,000 acres of land — 14 percent of New York City — including more than 5,000 individual properties ranging from Coney Island Beach and Central Park to community gardens and Greenstreets. We operate more than 800 athletic fields and nearly 1,000 playgrounds, 1,800 basketball courts, 550 tennis courts, 65 public pools, 51 recreational facilities, 15 nature centers, 14 golf courses, and 14 miles of beaches. We care for 1,200 monuments and 23 historic house museums. We look after 600,000 street trees, and two million more in parks. We are New York City’s principal providers of recreational and athletic facilities and programs. We are home to free concerts, world-class sports events, and cultural festivals.