Coney Island
Brooklyn, New York, 2005 - 2021
The Coney Island photographs document the New York City Housing Projects on the west side of the peninsula along with their surrounding environment, depicting a landscape shaped by structural racialization.
My connection to Coney Island is not observational alone. During these years, I worked for the New York City Housing Authority as an art instructor in all the community centers of Coney Island’s west-side developments. Through this work I formed relationships with residents, especially children and teenagers. These relationships shaped the project from within, it gave me access to daily life and the personal histories of the community.
The photographs include portraits of residents, street-level views of the housing complexes, and scenes that show the tension between public housing and the surrounding environment. The photographs also document the impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when flooding and infrastructure collapse exposed the vulnerability of these developments and the unequal burden placed on their residents. I photographed both the immediate aftermath and the slow, uneven recovery that followed.