Our guest speaker had to cancel last minute—which means we get to look at the rest of your photo essays together.
Assignment: Photo Essay #2: The Group Photo Essay
On Tuesday next week, your pitches will be due for the second and final photo essay of the semester. The group theme of these photo essays will be examining the ways NYC is changing through the food we eat. We will spend that class workshopping your ideas.
Change can mean a lot of things: It might refer to old ways being lost. It might mean being the leader in a new trend. It might mean adapting and evolving.
Some ideas:
Spotlight two different businesses that sell an iconic NYC foot like a chopped cheese: one old-school and affordable, and one in a trendier neighborhood, and tell the stories of the people behind both.
Photograph an urban farm as the planting season begins: something like the Black Joy Farm in the Bronx, perhaps, which is aimed at distributing fresh produce in a food desert and working to reconnect people with the land. Or another farm on this list.
Photograph a soup kitchen or community refrigerator and tell a story which delves into how food insecurity is affecting many New Yorkers.
Shoot a day in the life story of someone who provides an essential, behind the scenes role in bringing New Yorkers their food: someone like the person who delivers pastries to all the coffee carts, or someone who wakes up early to prep ingredients and then drives their food truck from Queens to busy intersections in Manhattan for the lunch crowd.
Are there any food traditions that are in danger of being lost, or that are having a moment of visibility because of world events? (Iran or Ukraine, for example?) Who is trying to keep them alive? What role does that food play in the cultural identity of an immigrant community? Attend a community-run cooking class.
Do a story on the disappearance of the dollar slice. Photograph a number of pizza places around the city (around Manhattan, or a sampling in different boroughs perhaps) that have been forced to raise prices. Talk to the owners and find out why.
Ramadan just began. Food obviously plays a major role in how it is observed. Have you heard of anything happening in the city this year that is interesting or new, or would be news to people who don’t celebrate?
Do something on the seed sovereignty movement. Attend a seed swap in Queens, or investigate the NYPL’s seed library. Photograph indigenous activists working on this issue.