In the South Bronx, our students are working through homelessness, incarceration at Rikers Island and upstate prisons, and the pressures of gang violence, parole, and probation. Alumni have gone on to sit on panels at Photoville, New York City's largest photography festival, and one recent graduate earned a scholarship to the International Center of Photography.
Students have shown their work at the Benrubi Gallery in Chelsea, the Shelter Gallery on the Lower East Side, and the Forum in Harlem, earning more than $2,000 from exhibition sales. Graduates leave with a portfolio strong enough to land paid photography work across the city. The program runs from a photo media lab in the South Bronx, where students build the skills to enter a job market that used to be closed to them.
Richard Renaldi and Gillian Laub join as guest instructors, and students visit the United Nations, the International Center of Photography, and the Howard Greenberg Gallery. Everyone who finishes the program leaves with their own Canon DSLR camera.
