Far Apart: Revelation and Refuge in an Urban Green Space with James Prochnik
Far Apart: Revelation and Refuge in an Urban Greenspace with James Prochnik
Wednesday, January 24th, at 7 pm EDT on Zoom
As we continue our Between Bodies exploration, James Prochnik will be speaking to us about his own creative “between” spaces and how they became portals into different ways of seeing, relating, and caring. In his remarkable, magical, and intimate project Far Apart, James found both revelation and refuge in a nearby urban green space.
Far Apart is a photographic love letter to Shore Road Park, a narrow strip of playgrounds, wooded paths, and ball fields in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. It’s an undistinguished park sandwiched between a dense residential neighborhood on one side and a six-lane highway on the other. Along with bird songs, you hear the roar of drag racing cars on the parkway and jet engines from planes heading to LaGuardia and JFK overhead. Wind-blown trash passes through the landscaping. And yet – during a difficult period in a pandemic-sickened city, this unassuming city park became a source of wonder, beauty, healing, and sometimes even horror. Portals opened up in what felt like the most unlikely place and transported James and his camera to what felt like different worlds.
James Prochnik will be showing pictures from Far Apart and sharing some of his influences and processes, from the first pictures to a completed photographic project.
Together we will explore what it means to use photography to traverse the most ordinary of places with openness and curiosity and how to attend to the unexpected narratives we find when we look closely.
James Prochnik is a Brooklyn-based photographer who uses photography as a means to explore the world outside, focusing on people, place, memory and the poetry of the everyday. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, Vice Media, Lenscratch, USA Today, and Shots Magazine and have been exhibited in galleries around the country. In 2019, James launched NYC Photo Community — a weekly newsletter listing photography events, workshops, exhibitions, and opportunities for photographers everywhere. James has been a regular guest lecturer on ethics and aesthetics in street photography at the University of Vermont.
