Author: Joann Lee

Residents of New York

More Art Presents: Andres Serrano: Residents of New York from More Art on Vimeo.

Residents of New York is a public art project by Andres Serrano. Using a 4×5 view camera, he spent months photographing the homeless residents of New York in response to the changing city and the issue of affordable housing. These photographs will be on display in the West 4th Street subway station, Judson Memorial Church, Laguardia Place, and several phone booths scattered in the city from May 15-June 16. Serrano says that this project was not produced out of a need to address a social issue, but rather, the notion that “if people pay attention to the photos they will go back outside and see the real people.” Early in the semester, we introduced our Future Imagemakers to Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, and I think it’s really interesting to compare the approaches of the artists who both isolate individuals of the city but circulate their images in different ways.

Resources

Unique Board

Unique Board is a website recently created by Tisch alum Dan Kim (class of 2013) to connect artists working with film & photography, dance & performing arts, design, fashion, fine art, technology & science, and music. Artists can submit projects that they need assistance with or post their talents for others to see in a Craigslist-like fashion. Unique Board makes use our increasingly tight-knit social networks in a productive manner and encourages collaborative work between artists.

Community Programs Education

Classroom Connections

Eight years ago, Classroom Connections was started to build a community between two Bronx schools—University Heights High School, a public school in one of the poorest congressional districts in America, and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a private school with a $43,000/year tuition. Students of each school exchange letters, engage in community service projects, and visit each other to discuss issues such as race relations. This article details a group activity led by Narrative 4 in which students first paired off to tell share stories about their lives and then regrouped to tell their partners’ stories in first person. As someone who attended a prestigious public high school in Manhattan with tremendous resources, I always felt like I was in a bubble and sheltered from truth of the inequality between schools in New York. I was touched by the article and the initiative to foster understanding and empathy between these students, and I definitely believe that there should be more collaborations like this to increase awareness of the state of the school system in New York.