Ways of Seeing Jackson Heights / René Sing Brooks

In 2018, after searching for a new apartment for over a year, my partner and I moved from Elmhurst—where we had lived for twelve years—to Jackson Heights. We knew we wanted to stay in Queens, but Jackson Heights wasn’t our first choice. Sunnyside was the prize, but we couldn’t afford it.

In Jackson Heights I found such density of people, machines, shadows, and colors. And sounds that seem to cling to Roosevelt Avenue sidewalks blended with the clicks-and-clacks of the number seven running overhead. It isn’t a community at ease; there are tensions, suspicions. There is something being shaped, and sometimes we see its kindest gestures, other times the sharp claws of intolerance. But there is communal hope that needs tending and visually documenting the daily flow might give us hints of what’s at stake.

WAYS OF SEEING JACKSON HEIGHTS is a photographic exploration of multiethnic and multi-cultural life in Jackson Heights, NY, particularly within the Roosevelt Avenue/Northern Blvd corridor. This project captures images of work, culture, faith, and social life, inviting a shared witnessing of the promises of communal life through the meeting of traditions and aspirations across generations.

What’s It Mean to be Nuyorican? / Maylyn Iglesias

This photography project explores the joy, pain, and paradoxes of growing up Nuyorican on the Lower East Side. My story and Loisaida can’t be separated. They’re intertwined. I will never know my family story. This neighborhood is my origin, the only family story I know. Like the Bodegas that are vanishing- I feel my identity slipping away with each shuttered storefront. A walking apparition in my own community. I am on a quest to document the last vestiges of Nuyorican Culture, community and identity in our neighborhood.

Nurses / Jeremy Orozco

One of every four Filipinos living in the New York and New Jersey area are working in healthcare, that being said, they are also four times more likely to be working as nurses. According to Business Insider, nurses of filipino descent comprise 4% of the US workforce but nearly a third of registered nurse deaths due to COVID-19.

Chiara is a registered Nurse, from Cebu, Philippines. She is 26 years old and migrated here at a young age thanks to her mother who sacrificed a great deal for the best interest of her children. Chiara returned to the Philippines later to study Nursing at Cebu Doctors University.

The project “Nurses”, follows a group of Nurses who are all graduates of Cebu Doctors University that have migrated to the US. The project sheds light on an alternate point of view of healthcare workers. The project Nurses is a long term project that will continue until I have a solid body of work that I can publish.

Good Things Comes Out Of This Tiny Kitchen / Shoshanna Soleyn

My photographs and videos document my Trinidadian mother's cooking to explore her own heritage as a New Yorker. “Good Things Comes Out Of This Tiny Kitchen” is something that my mother always says. The incredible thing about my mother’s tiny kitchen is the amount of love, wisdom, and delicious food that comes out. It shows my mother’s heritage, where she comes from, and the traditions we get to learn.

Trinidad and Tobago is made up of two main islands and several smaller islands. The country has a wide range of ethnicities, religions, and cultures. It was colonized first by Spain and then by the British. August 31, 1962, Trinidad and Tobago left the West Indies Federation and became independent, with Erica Williams as their prime minister.

My mother, Sheon Duke, was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She had to leave her country at the age of seventeen to help my aunt out after my aunt was wounded by a gunshot. My mom was not thrilled to come to the United States because she did not know anybody in America and cried throughout her entire plane ride. After living in the U.S. for several years, my mother decided to stay. She had me and my two sisters and worked a variety of jobs. Growing up with my mother was very interesting because some words she said while talking to us sounded different from things that we will say sometimes. I respect and love that my mother was born in Trinidad because we get to embrace another culture and learn a lot more and listen to all of her fun, exciting stories. After all, how my mother was raised was very different from how we were raised.

My mother loves cooking. She started learning at the age of thirteen when she was living in Trinidad. She learns from her mistakes when trying something for the first time, and she often takes tips from other people to make her food better. I was worried that my mother would not want to have her photo taken but she has been happy to share her cooking with me and allow me to create photographs capturing things we do as a family, and what she does in her everyday life.