Magic Under The Bridge

You’ll struggle to find a more picturesque festival of photography in the world, that’s for sure. Or one that is quite as fun.

Opening today Photoville NYC 2019 opens beneath the majestic span of the
Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO transforming the park into an immersive photography village populated by over 80 exhibitions in 60+ shipping containers repurposed into galleries. Photoville – which is really a small village of photography – will continue to focus on the power of visual storytelling, showcasing stories from across New York City’s five boroughs and throughout the world.

This is the eighth year Photoville settles into its rare and beautiful open setting – and this year it follows on from a successful 2-week run in Los Angeles in spring. The festival is produced by Brooklyn based nonprofit United Photo Industries (co-founded by Sam Barzilay, Dave Shelley and Laura Roumanos).

This year’s festival is expected to welcome more than 95,000 visitors over the course of eight days. For dates and opening times see here. Don’t miss the special opening night program from United Photo Industries celebrating the photo community featuring work by We, Women; Community Heroes; Magnum Foundation; Documenting Detroit; the Bronx Documentary Center; For Freedoms and many more.

Free to the public, Photoville features exhibits by over 600 visual artists each year – some are familiar names and institutions like Lynsey Addario, Andrea Bruce, Bryan Denton, Kiana Hayeri, Chris Hondros, Meridith Kohut, Laura Morton, Kirsten Luce and Ruby Washington, the first African-American female staff photographer for The New York Times, who passed away in September 2018. Installations cover a dizzying array of subjects from climate change to albinism, traditional coffee houses in Amsterdam that are hand printed with the coffee they serve to hip hop, migration, rural celebrations to portraits of women serving life sentences in prisons and even a look at Playboy behind the lens. The images will transport viewers from Venezuela to Ecuador to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to Silicon Valley among other places.

But Photoville is about way more than just the photographic prints and installations. There are nightly screenings, endless family activities (including larger than life photo puzzles), demonstrations and workshops by Leica Camera, Adobe and others, talks, hands-on workshops, a safety clinic for freelancers, a community photo book store and walking tours in which to participate. And then, of course, there’s the community beer garden…And dogs are welcome, so bring along your pooch!

— Samantha Reinders

Photoville NYC
Produced by United Photo Industries 
September 12-15 and September 19-22, 2019