The third consecutive year of the Faces of Harlem exhibition will be coming to an end on November 30.
The outdoor photographic presentation has been on display in front of Harlem’s Morningside Park (Morningside Avenue and 114th Street) since August 5. As you walk up the sidewalk next to the park, you are witness to what essentially serves as outdoor proof of the lives of everyday Harlemites. You come across scenes of 1970s and 1980s vendors at East Harlem’s La Marqueta, photos of individuals from Harlem’s current LGBTQ and transgender community, and profiles of Olympic champion fencers and fencer club participants from the Peter Westbrook Foundation.
There are views of young girls primping and preparing for a dance recital and perfectly timed, still-frame shots of Harlemites swinging and twirling and laughing while dancing the Lindy Hop.
“It’s nice to see some beautiful artwork, you know—photography, that’s outside,” commented Patricia Charles as she and her sister and brother took time to view the photographs. “It’s nice that it’s outside.”
The three siblings, who grew up near the old Polo Grounds, came to the Morningside Park location specifically to view Faces of Harlem because they heard it would be coming down by the end of November. “We tend to go to museums more often,” said Charles’s sister, Maria Ricardo. “We were actually trying to go to a museum today, but when we heard about this exhibition, we said we prefer to come here and see these.
“It’s nice to see these photographs of Harlemites and also the different sectors.” She remarked on the pictures that show some of the worship practices of Dominican Americans and other prints that displayed a varied range of people dancing the Lindy Hop.
Ricardo laughed and said, “We were remarking on how we thought we recognized one or two people from the Jazz Mobile. There’s one guy who has spats on—I’m sure that’s him––I’ve seen him there dancing all the time!”
The 2023 Faces of Harlem exhibition features 10 photographers: Tamara Blake Chapman,
Jan Anthoio Diaz, Flordalis Espinal, Jeremy Grier, Marcia Bricker Halperin, Elijah Mogoli, Katsu Naito, Kaila Burke-Ozuna, Lindsay Perryman, and Laila Annmarie Stevens. Five youth photographers––Mikayale Despaigne, Salvador Peña Nissenblatt, Jeremiah Nunez, Marilyn Romerick, and Jack Van Clief––also contributed works for the presentation, which stretches from 114th to 124th street.
Sade Boyewa El, the exhibition’s founder and chief curator, said the Faces of Harlem presentation is her passion project. After moving to Harlem in the early ’90s, she said she saw historic Harlem change before her eyes.
“I guess I perceive myself as a social documentary photographer,” she said. “It was always, for me, documenting people and their stories, because nothing is permanent—what we see here today, whether it is a building or people or…whatever it is, it may not be here tomorrow.”
Boyewa El started documenting how Harlem was changing from an historical perspective, but she soon realized that one person could not cover everything. “Every photographer looks at things through a different lens,” she said. “We all know different people; we all have different stories to tell. I can’t tell all the stories—it’s impossible, because I don’t know everybody, so I started calling on other photographers.”For the past three years, Faces of Harlem’s free outdoor exhibition has hung the work of Harlem-themed photographers in neighborhood parks for a total of four months. Funded via community donations; grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; and support from organizations like NYC Parks, the West Harlem Development Corporation, Morningside Park, Photoville, Fuji Film, and more, the nonprofit Faces Of Harlem (FOH) public art initiative puts out an annual call for photographers to document how Harlem is and what it’s becoming.