Thanksgiving in the projects of Bed-Stuy

I hope everybody had a great thanksgiving!
I myself decided to spend my very first thanksgiving with the Crossover community in Bed-Stuy. The day started with a nice lunch in the church, everybody from the community was there. I over ate and went then with my new friend Theron and his two kids from Crown Heights to see his aunt. It turned out that the uncle and aunt live in one of the big (and what I find kind of scary) project buildings. Ever since I moved out here I so wanted to get inside one of the housings and suddenly I found myself in the living room of one of the apartments on 7th floor of 303 Vernon Avenue.

Michelle lives here with her husband who wasn’t home for thanksgiving. Before I knew it I had become pretty drunk on Michelle’s Paul Masson Brandy. Photographing the family was very easy since they all needed photos of themselves on their facebook profiles.

Drunk and visually exhausted I travelled all the way to Alka’s place in East Harlem where we met up with a lot of ICP people and had turkey and all that. Great day, thanks to everybody that was involved in making my first thanksgiving a wonderful experience!

Michelle

Theron

The street block

Hi guys

Just posting a photograph I made this afternoon when working on the street block assignment. If I’ve ever said that I didn’t like the Bedstuy area I am taking it back now. I will encourage every of you to really get to know the people in your neighborhood. Such a good feeling to have a lot of acquaintances, a lot of people to say hi to every morning on your way to school. I will also encourage more of you to post some of your work here on the blog.

And then I will just remind you all of how awesome you guys are! Never thought I would meet that many amazing people in one place.

Lenear (11) is hanging out with his aunt Tee Tee. Lenear lives with his mother and aunt in the small studio on Dekalb Avenue. On Monday Lenear’s mother is starting a new job program and the two of them have to move to a shelter.

Thoughts on a Thursday night..

We photograph to express ourselves. We photograph to show other people how we see the world. I guess, we photograph because of the experiences that follow when we are out there in the world as well. But we also photograph to be recognized. To show that we are damn good at this. This is what we can and will do.

Since ICP started to kick our asses I’ve been trying to define what is that drives me out there with the camera. Even though I hate thinking and talking about the future, I gotta admit that my thoughts have been around what I actually want to do with photography. I know that it gives me something every single time I am out there. I so clearly feel how much more I am living when I am photographing. I feel energized..

But.. what is the dream? Keep on documenting life? For what purpose? Money? Recognition? For my self or for those I am photographing? For a newspaper or a magazine? For a gallery? Am I even a journalist or just a photographer? Am I even able to produce photographs for other people? Maybe I should not work with photography, just keep it as a part of my life, but do something else for my living?

You will not get any answers only questions. Well I am only 20 years old, so I will let you older guys think those thoughts. But what I can give you is a photograph.