Photoville offered a highly creative visual experience through different perspectives of various artists at the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The design of the exhibition place was really creative, and I found the usage of containers to host exhibits very interesting.
We had the chance to meet photographer Ryan Christopher Jones, who took photos for The New York Times project about the opioid crisis highlighting the personal emotions of the people suffering. He explained how we got the intimate shots without intimidating the people he was taking photos of, which he said he doesn’t like to refer as objects.
Additionally, I found two exhibitions highly outstanding in terms of visual representation and storytelling. The first one was Kirsten Luce’s series of photographs for the National Geographic Magazine, about animals forced to work for human entertainment. The photos were taken all around the world, and I felt like the most important thing about this project was that the photos told the story alone. Even without reading the captions, the photos were really strong and impactful. My favorite piece was the photograph of a tiger with chains on. The active struggle of the tiger was visible through a single shot, which I found very amusing.
Another exhibition I found very inspiring was BORN FREE: Mandela’s Generation of Hope. It consisted of very powerful photos showing social change in South Africa. There was a video documentary of the people who were photographed, playing in the container. There were stories of people with very different economic backgrounds talking about their lives. The Dutch artist, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, was there when I was in the container for the second time. She said that she lived in South Africa for a few years and worked on this project during that time. Another interesting aspect of this exhibition was the fact that it was a “Bring a Free Print Home” exhibition. All the photos had many copies and were up for grabs.
