Zachary Schulman Photography

11/10/2023

Opening reception Saturday!

10/26/2023

The Community Gardener Portrait Project: Brooklyn

Photography and Interviews by Zachary Schulman

Nov 11 - Dec 17

Opening Reception:
Saturday, Nov 11
12:30 - 3 pm

Rain Date Sunday, Nov 12

Live set by DJ Stylus
Refreshments will be served!

Walt L. Shamel Community Garden
1097 Dean St, Brooklyn NY 11216

EXHIBIT HOURS:
Sat/Sun 12 pm to 4 pm
Mon/Wed/Fri 10 am to 4 pm or by appointment:
[email protected] or 718.869.2012

The Community Gardener Portrait Project is made possible by public funds from the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Statewide Community Regrants Program, as well as from a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, both administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.

10/26/2023

09/04/2023

Save the date for the opening of “Community Gardeners of Brooklyn” November 11th (rain date Nov 12th) at Walt L. Shamel Community Garden in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Specific time and more details coming soon, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, you can read more about the project in Gothamist’s recent coverage of the project.

The show will feature portraits of over 60 Brooklyn community gardeners photographed in their gardens alongside quotes from the gardeners highlighting their connections with these unique spaces.

This project is made possible by public funds from the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Statewide Community Regrants Program, as well as from a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, both administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.

Zachary Schulman says he has photographed and interviewed 115 gardeners in more than 25 neighborhoods across New York City since 2018. Soon, his work will be displayed at a community garden in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

05/12/2023

At the end of last month and beginning of this one, I spent a nonstop 10 days documenting “Archive of Desire”, a festival inspired by the poet C.P. Cavafy for Onassis Foundation USA. There were so many beautiful moments that I wish you all could’ve seen and heard (or did you attend? Lemme know!) It was a crash course in Cavafy for me, filled with live music, theater, readings, and more. Anastasia Tsioulcas wrote a wonderful, personal piece about it for The New York Times, and the paper ran a half dozen of my photos along with it.

I loved feeling immersed in the work of the poets, composers, musicians, and other artists that Cavafy inspired. Are you a Cavafy fan? How has Cavafy affected your life?

Thanks Sophie Butcher for selecting some magical moments, both large and small. The article link skips the paywall:

In the festival “Archive of Desire,” artists and musicians thoughtfully engage with the writing of Constantine P. Cavafy, a self-assessed “ultramodern poet.”

04/12/2023

I am thrilled to be a 2023 Brooklyn Arts Council Brooklyn Arts Fund and Local Arts Support grantee!

These funds will be used to support the Community Gardener Portrait Project in Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, East New York, and other neighborhoods around Brooklyn. I’ll continue my series creating portraits of community gardeners in their gardens and captioning the images with quotes from the gardeners themselves. I envision the project supporting and strengthening Brooklyn’s community of gardeners. Stay tuned for more, including a show at the end of the growing season.

This year, Brooklyn Arts Council distributed over $1.2 million to help fund hundreds of projects by Brooklyn artists and organizations through their Community Arts Grants, Creative Equations Fund, and the new Brooklyn Empower Fund regrant programs. To view the full list of 2023 BAC grantees, visit brooklynartscouncil.org.

Brooklyn Arts Fund (BAF) / Charlene Victor and Ella J. Weiss Cultural Entrepreneur Fund is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.

Local Arts Support (LAS) is sponsored, in part, by the Statewide Community Regrants (SCR) Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.

A special big thanks to Green Guerillas for their fiscal sponsorship of the LAS grant, GreenThumb and Brooklyn Queens Land Trust for their ongoing support, and of course all the community gardeners who have participated in the project or expressed interest in joining.

04/03/2022

We will never arrest or incarcerate our way out of bigotry and hate violence. That’s why Jews for Racial and Economic Justice [JFREJ] and fellow Coalition members were out on a cold, wet February day in 2020 - and have been out many times since - to canvass neighbors and host upstander intervention trainings to safely intervene and counter hate violence in our city.

I was out that day documenting this work for JFREJ, and now this photo is part of the newly updated Activist New York exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. This is the first time a photo of mine has been included in a museum exhibit and I’m thrilled!

The ongoing exhibit documents social activism in NYC over the last 300+ years.

As described by the museum:
In a town renowned for its in-your-face persona, New Yorkers have banded together on issues as diverse as civil rights, wages, sexual orientation, and religious freedom. Using artifacts, photographs, audio and visual presentations, as well as interactive components that seek to tell the story of activism in the five boroughs past and present, Activist New York presents the passions and conflicts that underlie the city's history of agitation.

01/06/2022

"I want to share with everyone that even though gardening, farming is physically stressful, it is a mental destresser. Because once you get into the garden and the plants command your attention, everything else disappears from your head until you finish gardening. It really is a mental destresser. Yeah, I know that as a fact. I've experienced it so many times."

- Marlene Wilkes, Hands and Heart Garden, East New York, Brooklyn

Check out the full photo essay at tinyurl.com/mrx9r4m4

01/02/2022

"The garden was founded in 1978 by the neighbors in the McIntosh Neighborhood Association. This was an empty lot. People would use it to dump their debris, garbage. And we got together as a group of neighbors to clean up the lot and start planting. We planted vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers. At that time, most of us were working people. I worked full time. But we would do it in the afternoon and on Saturdays when we got home from work. And that's how we worked this garden."

"It gives me a peace of mind. I can come by here and it's like a safe haven to me. I come out here and nobody bothers you. It’s relaxing. That's what it is to me, a safe haven. It makes my life more bearable. The beauty of it, it's so relaxing."

- Ada Smothers, McIntosh Neighborhood Association Garden, Elmhurst, Queens

Check out the full photo essay at tinyurl.com/mrx9r4m4

12/30/2021

"A number of people in the neighborhood who are recovering from cancer and chemotherapy like to come in and watch the bees. There are butterflies and Cabbage Whites right now, but we have lots of swallowtails, commas, and painted ladies. People birdwatch a certain amount here. I've seen hawks here, cardinals, robins, and blue jays. Usually one or two days in the spring and in the fall hummingbirds come through either headed north or south, and if you're lucky enough to be here [you can] catch them. In the spring we always have praying mantis, this being a praying mantis sanctuary of many years. In May, the little teeny babies were all over the fennel. Then they started moving to other plants, at the same time that the swallowtail caterpillars were hatching. It was really wonderful. Anybody who would come into the garden had never seen creatures like that, and it's fun to show them, especially the children. [The garden] seems to draw people together. People recovering from cancer can find a quiet place to be outdoors here, it seems to do wonderful things for them."

- Patti Hagan, St. Marks Avenue / Prospect Heights Community Garden, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

Check out the full photo essay at tinyurl.com/mrx9r4m4

12/26/2021

"I've been here for 22 years. This was a dumping ground when I got here. And I took it upon myself to start removing the tires, the old air conditioners, about a thousand paper bags that were festooned all over the place, the beer cans, the coffee cups. Eventually, I started calling [New York City Department of] Sanitation to get some help. They started to do this whole leveling thing. They came in here with a bulldozer and they scalped everything and left a muddy mess behind. So I came in and cleaned up all the trash that they left behind. And little by little it started to recover. Whenever it rained, there was a washout of muddy, brown water rushing into the street, it would pond down the street here. And when it eventually subsided, there was this nice fine powdered dust, and the cars would run over it. And there'd be a dust cloud every time. Guess who was breathing that in? Now when it rains, it's clear water because the vegetation is restored on top, and it holds the clay in."

- Mike DiGiacomo, Hill Street Community Garden, Stapleton, Staten Island

Check out the full photo essay at tinyurl.com/mrx9r4m4

12/23/2021

"I plant the flowers up front just to draw people in; people are attracted to the smells of the garden."

- Lionel Mapp III, Five Star Garden, Harlem, Manhattan

Check out the full photo essay at tinyurl.com/mrx9r4m4