I'll never forget the 1st time I encountered it after moving to New York City. I was on the train, working for a wedding photographer in Coney Island. An irate man, clearly a lifelong minority resident, made his frustration with my presence quite known.

"Go back to Manhattan where you belong, white girl. " I was both deeply saddened and deeply grateful for this exchange. It was horribly uncomfortable but, it’s about time that feeling gets flipped on white folks regularly, we are all overdue on that front. It was also an important wake-up call as the rural hick chick from farm country, Pennsylvania. It was my first exposure to how deeply divided and segregated the city still can be, to how much more complex the issue is than most of us ever realize, especially as photographers. I knew as an emerging photographer, I was no more capable of affording Manhattan rent prices than this man was. But also, my moving to Brooklyn also impacted him by making a neighborhood where he probably spent his whole life, less affordable for him. So how do we bridge this divide?. thephoblographer.com

2019-12-5 20:00