Emily Anne Epstein

Did you miss the opening of TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY?

No worries!!

Prints are still available for purchase.

Click here to view the show index: TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY

And click here to download it: TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY .PDF

By Alexandra Cheney

“TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY,” a group show highlighting emerging photojournalists, including Emmy-nominated Maisie Crow, premiered Wednesday night at Panda on the Lower East Side.

Each of the seven photojournalists featured were asked by curator and fellow photographer Emily Anne Epstein to choose six photographs of a distinct individual they had shot over time. From Alvaro Corzo’s “Reverend Billy Talen” to Crow’s “Lucia Domingos Artur,” each essay was buffered by six quotes that brought the voice of the subject into the photographer’s telling of the story.

“Everyone says photojournalism is dying,” Epstein said, adding that “art shows are a way for us to reinvent ourselves, to reach a larger public and stay afloat.”

In the mixed-use art gallery/bar/coffee shop, the photographs are hung in a set of rows nearly two feet above eye level, which owner Joseph Latimore explained was a surefire way to ensure patrons don’t knock them off the exposed brick walls.

“I like an eclectic show like this one because the type of patrons that come here like to experience the space and see artists telling different stories,” said Latimore. “But I like to see people when it’s not opening night, when they come in to just have a beer and have an experience with the work.”

The 42 photographs, all 11×14 images encased in varying black frames, range from $175 to $250 each. As the curator Epstein, who first picked up a camera nine years ago and found herself unable to stop documenting the people and moments around her, selected the frames and the location within Panda for each of seven sets of photographs.

When she’s not curating, Epstein writes for the Lens blog at The New York Times and likes to challenge the preconceived notion that photojournalism is meant strictly for publication with news.

“Instead of flipping through a newspaper, I wanted people to spend time with the images, without an editor’s hand pre-selecting what images would be shown,” Epstein said.

From 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Tuesday, Epstein and Ryan Brooks, a fellow featured photographer and the show’s hanger, made certain that the black and white essays were spaced apart within the color ones, and that no two themes intersected. That is to say, if a piece dealt with family or poverty, Epstein intentionally posited it next to a piece that looked at lifestyle or indulgence.

At Panda, the mostly younger crowd arrived in waves, eager to see their friends or colleagues work, which for Crow is still in progress. She will return to Mozambique in November to shoot Lucia again, who’s mother has since died from AIDS. In this exhibition, Crow will donate all the money she receives from sold prints to fund Lucia’s education, giving back to one of her subjects.

“She lives everyday just for today,” Crow said. “She doesn’t have the luxury of thinking about tomorrow.” Each of Crow’s prints are $200 and will remain at Panda until September 18. Panda is open Monday – Saturday from 10 a.m. until midnight, 2 am or 4 am, depending on the night.

Our show was mentioned in today’s Metro NY!

PANDA GALLERY is proud to present

TOMORROW
//
TODAY
//
YESTERDAY

a group show featuring emerging photojournalists

RYAN BROOKS
TIFFANY CLARK
MAISIE CROW
ALVARO CORZO
EMILY ANNE EPSTEIN
AGATON STROM
AMIRAN WHITE

Each photojournalist has extensively photographed an individual, capturing the events and emotions of one person’s life.

Curated by Emily Anne Epstein, people will walk around the gallery and be transported into different worlds- the world of a NYC graffiti artist, a child mother in Mexico, a burlesque dancer in Brooklyn, a Reverend of the Church of Life After Shopping and more.

This is a rare opportunity to experience in-depth photojournalism on gallery walls.

Please join us for our opening reception at PANDA at 139 Chrystie Street from 6-9 on Wednesday, September 1st.

The show will be up until our closing party, Saturday, September 18th.

(BD to Grand, JMZ to Bowery, FM to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring)

Find us on Facebook too.

If you squint, you can read it :)

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Columbia University about photojournalism. It was a strange experience- it’s no easy task to be the lecturer in front of a room of students. I remember what hell was raised when guest speakers would come into my classes, the caliber of the questions, the intensity of the responses. I didn’t freak out about it for too long, as I had presumed for the last two months I would be holding an informal workshop for a few students. When the Columbia Spectator photo editor told me she booked a lecture hall, complete with multimedia support, the day before…it was an intense 24 hours. I was also in the depths of hay fever, so it could have gone a million ways.

Sniffles aside, it was a great night. I remember how lost I was when I got started after graduation; Columbia does little to prepare students for a job outside of academia, finance, medicine or law. I wonder why they offer majors at all- no matter what you study, most Columbia kids come out the same.

Even though I went so far off the path, it’s comforting to think that Columbia will still carve out a place on its mantle for me. They wrote this little blurb on me, and it made me feel successful in a way I haven’t before.

I guess the point of this post was that even though I was there for the students, it was more of an inspiration for me than anything else. I hope the notes they jotted and the tidbits I shared will make them brave. The past three years have been hard, but sharing my experiences reaffirmed the choices I’ve made. At 24, I own my own business, millions of people see my photographs everyday, and I love what I do. I also found out that I love teaching.

Check it out at Moma until May 31.

Who’s in?

FRIDAY, APRIL 2

+ Allyson Vieira “Ozymandias” at Small A Projects
Chinatown/LES: 261 Broome street, 6-8pm

+ Walt Cassidy “The Protective Motif” at Invisible-Exports
Chinatown/LES: 14 Orchard street, 6-8pm

Amy Bennett, Benjamin King, Dan Asher, Ofer Wolberger, Tom McGrath,
Toru Hayashi, Yusuke Nishimura “Landscape and Solitude” at Kumukumu
Chinatown/LES: 42 Rivington street, 6-8pm

If you weren’t able to stop by the Left Forum at Pace University last weekend, you may have thought you missed out on my photographs.  Well you didn’t!  The event was extremely successful, breaking last year’s record of 3,000 attendees.  Noam Chomsky was the closing speaker and the theme for 2010 was “The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination.”
My essay was titled “Socialist Still Life”

Located in the premier area of downtown, the Bauen has everything a hotel could need- a bustling cafe, ornate rooms and a dramatic history.  What makes the Bauen special is that it’s not just a hotel- it’s a cooperative. After Argentina’s financial crisis in 2001, the owners left town, leaving the workers unemployed and the hotel vacant.  In March of 2003, the former employees took action and reclaimed the business for themselves.   They made repairs and beds and before long, the doors were open.  Since then, battles in court have rocked the Bauen, but it remains one of the flagships of recuperated business.  Despite international coverage, guests are not always aware that they are staying in a hotel that exists due to an exciting economic and social reform.   I chose to focus on the experience of the unknowing guest- photographing objects, rooms and lightly touching upon the invisible laborers, in order to show the subtleties of this remarkable place.

Irene Kaplan, 67, has enjoyed decorating her new apartment with statuettes, books and pictures from calendars.

The transition into supportive housing was easy for her, but she noted, “One size doesn’t fit all.”

Mentally Ill Look for Home in NYC
by Amy Zimmer / Metro

For 16 years Irene Kaplan lived in a 200-bed home for mentally ill adults in Coney Island.

“You just twiddled your thumbs and smoked yourself to death,” she said. Last year, in an experiment, the state moved her and 59 others into their own apartments where they get visits from case workers. She quit smoking during her first week in a Brownsville apartment.

A Brooklyn federal judge, who found large scale homes violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, this month ordered the state to create 4,500 units of supportive housing like Kaplan’s.

Last week the state lost its bid to stay the court order.

While Kaplan says she found a new lease in life, others are concerned at having supportive housing next door. In Far Rockaway, where over half of Queens’ adult home residents reside — and where there are many vacant apartments that could become supportive housing — residents are bracing themselves.

“A number of these poor souls, quite frankly, should not be on their own,” said Jonathan Graska, district manager of the local community board. “Nurses have called us and said they won’t take their meds.”

Coco Cox’s neighbors in Norwood don’t know she spent three years in an adult home in Riverdale, but she doesn’t hide her visits from caseworkers — the point is to integrate.

“There are millions of people with mental illness,” Cox said. “They’re on the subway with you, working with you. You just don’t know it because they take care of themselves and take medications.”

I won second place in the January General News category of the National Press Photographer’s Association’s Monthly Clip Contest in Region 2! How cool!  How complicated!

Sandhogs toil away underneath Grand Central Terminal carefully constructing the East Side Access Project. The project will connect the Long Island Rail Road’s (LIRR) Main and Port Washington lines in Queens to a new LIRR terminal in Manhattan. The new connection will increase the LIRR’s capacity into Manhattan, and dramatically shorten travel time for Long Island and eastern Queens commuters traveling to the east side of Manhattan in 2016, when it will be completed. Thursday, January 28, 2010. (Emily Anne Epstein/Metro)

Three-year-old Manhattanite Allie Jesner enjoys the last day of the Roosevelt Island Tramway before it closes until August for repairs, Sunday, February 28, 2010.