Newsletter | October 21, 2022

This is an exciting fall season at En Foco. We highlight four of our past Photo Fellows and are actively in search of the next cohort. We are hosting a How-to-apply info session for the 2023 En Foco Photography Fellowship on October 25 via Zoom; opening two dynamic community exhibitions in Harlem, both curated by Kay Hickman: Resistance for Freedom and Utopian Voyage; and sharing all four sessions of our successful Immersive Technology: Art, Activism, and Community series for free via https://enfoco.org/immtech/.

"Spiritual Guidance" Lisa DuBois

“My dedication to the arts was enhanced by the En Foco Fellowship. It also provided me with the confidence I needed to explore other photographic endeavors. I was invited to curate one of En Foco's exhibits titled (Deep Roots), and collaborating with Bill Aguado and the En Foco team was a rewarding experience.” – Lisa DuBois 

Lisa DuBois is a Bronx-based artist-curator and photojournalist. She is a socially conscious artist who describes herself as “an inquisitive spectator exploring subcultures in the world.” A 2017 Fellow (Nueva Luz, Volume 21:1), DuBois is now the Photo Editor and Diversity Advisor for Social Documentary Network. As Curator and Creative Advisor, she helped launch the first Art on the Ave, the first large-scale outdoor exhibition on Manhattan’s West Side, and she is also a Loupe artist – a channel that provides streaming art on multiple cable stations. She curated the 2021 group exhibition for En Foco, Deep Roots, which tells visual stories on traditions and the connections between the photographer and his or her beloved heritage.

"Street corner where Kevin Gómez was killed by military forces. Kevin was shot in the back with his hands in the air. The investigation is still ongoing after a year. Coquimbo, Chile, 2020." Javier  Álvarez

“Being an En Foco Fellow has been a truly revealing experience, witnessing first-hand growth in our community, by producing culture and addressing social issues." – Javier Álvarez

Javier Álvarez, 2022 En Foco Photo Fellow featured in the current edition of Nueva Luz, Volume 26:1, is a Brooklyn-based Chilean documentary photographer focused on social issues regarding identity and cultural resistance. Earlier this year, he presented his first book PRÉDIO, which shows the intimate relationships of 200 families living inside an abandoned building in São Paulo, Brazil. He is currently promoting his book in Latin America and editing a body of work about the fatal victims of the social revolution in Chile (2019-2022). After earning a BFA in Photography from ARCOSArts and Communications Institute in Santiago de Chile, he worked internationally as a freelance editorial and press photographer for agencies between Brazil and Chile. He works as an independent photographer for media outlets and commercial clients and is a contributor to the Brazilian independent journalistic platform Mídia NINJA.

"Untitled" Roger Richardson

“If it weren’t for the opportunities given by En Foco, I don’t believe I would have been able to be in a position now where I would be a published artist. En Foco means so much to me because of this support, and their impassioned mission to show that minority communities have a rich history within the medium of photography. I will be forever grateful for the support En Foco has given me and other artists.” – Roger Richardson

Roger Richardson is a photographer based in Hudson Valley, NY. Born in the Bronx, Richardson is a former En Foco Board Member, a 2019 En Foco Photo Fellow (Nueva Luz, Volume 23:1), and part of En Foco’s successful Dos Mundos: (Re)Constructing Narratives, a traveling group exhibition (2020). Richardson is working on the final edits of his first monograph, Let Me Sow Love, published by Deadbeat Club. He earned a BFA in Photography, SUNY Purchase, 2017, and his AAS in Visual Communications, SUNY Orange, 2014. His work comes from a deep desire for human connection, empathy, and compassion by using photography to document his experiences in the hopes of creating honest and impassioned images of the world around him. Richardson has joined the En Foco team as social media coordinator.

Carmen Lizardo is now part of the En Foco Board of Directors.

“The En Foco Fellowship placed my work into a world of freedom and belonging. Its support has reassured me that my artwork has a reason to be made, is meaningful, and should be seen.” – Carmen Lizardo

Carmen Lizardo describes herself as a “detective, a hunter, and a seeker, collecting memories that weave personal stories, political and cultural heritages to speak about immigration, race, memory, and identity.” A 2022 Photo Fellow, Lizardo’s artwork is currently featured in En Foco’s current edition of Nueva Luz, Volume 26:1 and her art was also featured in En Foco’s The Apartment Gallery Artist Issue, Nueva Luz (Volume 25:2). An Afro Caribbean artist based in the Hudson Valley, NY, she has been invited to exhibit at Alfred University in 2023 and is currently finishing a body of work for this exhibition consisting of 20 large format photographs and five photo-based collages. Lizardo, who will also serve as a visiting artist at Alfred University, holds a BFA and MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and is a tenured faculty member for SUNY New Paltz’s Fine and Performing Arts program.

En Foco's Photography Fellowship How-to-apply session is on October 25 at 6PM. RSVP today!

The En Foco Photography Fellowship is designed to support photographers of color who demonstrate the highest quality of work. The application closes on November 11, 2022.

Immersive Technology: Art, Activism, and Community, co-hosted with BronxNet and Pregones PRTT served as an introduction to immersive technologies and provided audiences both virtually and in-person with an entry point to immersive services, facilities, and equipment available to artists and the community. Throughout the sessions, En Foco addressed the critical lack of tech-based programming and support in the Bronx and empowered other community organizations and institutions to begin thinking about how to implement immersive technologies in ways that prioritize cultural equity and access.

NYC Media's art and culture program, That's So New York, aired a feature on En Foco! The feature covers the history of En Foco and our critical mission to support and showcase artists of color.

Resistance For Freedom

October 27, 2022 - November 17, 2022

Hamilton Landmark Galleries

Virtual exhibition is now open!

En Foco is proud to announce the upcoming community exhibition, Resistance for Freedom, hosted in collaboration with the Hamilton Landmark Galleries and the National Conference of Artists, and curated by Kay Hickman.

Activism has played a crucial role in fighting for justice and challenging governments, and other oppressive systems to create social change. Protest imagery today poses as tableaux vivant and has normalized protests and public resistance as a way of community outreach. In this exhibition, we broaden the conversation and see that the act of simply existing can be a form of activism while honoring the images made during public actions,

protests and other forms of active resistance.

Resistance for Freedom features the works of Chris Cook, Jeremy Dennis, Francely Flores, and Lawrence Sumulong.

Utopian Voyage

November 5, 2022 - December 1, 2022

Children’s Art Carnival

En Foco is proud to announce the upcoming community exhibition, Utopian Voyage, hosted in collaboration with the Children’s Art Carnival, and curated by Kay Hickman.

Utopian Voyage explores the notion of what it would look like if people of color created their ideal future realities? Afrofuturism lends us the ability to look past our current state and shape a new reality. It is a way of exploring the future and alternate realities, undefined by lasting effects of settler colonialism, through a black cultural lens and an artistic aesthetic. Shaping the world around the idea of agency, is a method of self liberation and healing. The exhibition Utopian Voyage explores three different realities. Each photographer brings their own unique vision to what this could look like.

Utopian Voyage features the works of Albany Andaluz, Asherdé Amoy Gil, and Cristina Bartley Dominguez.

Comité Noviembre’s 2022 National Puerto Rican Artisans Fair & Book Expo

November 19, 2022 12:00-6:00PM

Hostos Community College

Comité Noviembre’s National Puerto Rican Virtual Fair and Book Expo will launch on November 20, 2022.

Shop comitenoviembrevirtualfair.org and support many of the PRIDA members, friends, and supporters.

Roger Richardson: Let Me Sow Love

Deadbeat Club Press

Work from Roger Richardson's project Let Me Sow Love was published in Nueva Luz, Volume 23:1. 

When politicians and pundits talk about the heartland, or the heart of the country, they’re generally not pandering to places like Roger Richardson’s Middletown, which is located in Orange County, in New York’s Hudson Valley. Yet the people and places in Let Me Sow Love exist right smack in the middle of myriad 21st-century American realities. Refreshingly, though, there’s not so much as a whiff of polemic in Richardson’s photographs. As the title suggests, this is a book full of what feel like genuine and compassionate interactions and engagements, as opposed to the now-expected confrontations. You sense right away that Richardson knows this place intimately, and these are his people. As a result, Let Me Sow Love presents with remarkable clarity a compelling portrait of an utterly realistic human community at a unique and radically insecure moment in the country’s history.

The late Philip Levine, arguably the greatest working-class poet of the late 20th century, once said that his goal was to write poems so transparent that “no words are noticed. You look through them into a vision of the people, the place.” Time and again, Richardson realizes Levine’s vision through his photographs, and it’s a vision that will be achingly familiar to anyone who grew up in or has spent time in strikingly similar working-class cities and towns all over the United States.

Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos

Center for Art, Research and Alliances

Work from Marilyn Nance's project Grandma Anna's Funeral was published in Nueva Luz - Volume 2, Issue 1, Winter 1987. Nance's new book, Last Day in Lagos, has been shortlisted for the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award in the First Photobook category. 

While serving as the photographer for the US contingent of the North American delegation, Brooklyn-based photographer Marilyn Nance made more than 1,500 images throughout the course of the festival—one of the most comprehensive photographic accounts of FESTAC’77. Drawing from Nance’s extensive archive, most of which has never before been published, Last Day in Lagos chronicles the exuberant intensity and sociopolitical significance of this extraordinary event.

Over the course of five decades, Marilyn Nance (born 1953) has produced images of unique moments in the cultural history of the US and the African Diaspora. Nance is a two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Library of Congress, and has been published in The World History of Photography, History of Women in Photography and The Black Photographers Annual. She lives in New York.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and Hurricane Ian in Florida, En Foco stands in solidarity. Overcoming the devastation the hurricanes left behind will take everyone’s help. For more information, visit our new emergency resource guide below.