Participating Artists Include:
Owen Davis / Michael Day / Anthony Gonzalez / Nicole Goodwin / Matt Howard / Jonas Lara / Trent Love / Juana Enriquez Luster / Ciazaris Rodriguez / Josephe Wade / Croft Young
About the Program & The Exhibition
Now in its third year, Seeing Here Now is a photography and video workshop series for military veterans. As non-partisan outreach to the veterans’ community in and around New York City - which includes veterans of the Gulf War as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the free weekly workshops offer participants the opportunity to express themselves visually as well as to explore the basics of photography, video and collaborative art in a welcoming community of fellow veterans.
The program encourages participants as valued individual artists and image-makers telling their unique stories, within which exists a framework for the facilitation of successful military reintegration back into civilian life. Such integration combines increased understanding between military members and civilians communicated via the unique visual voices the program’s veteran artists continue to develop along the way.
Workshop participants are taught advanced image-making practices using accessible photographic devices (such as cell phones or point-and-shoot cameras) or donated professional equipment. Established artists, including filmmakers, fine-art photographers and writers, visit the workshops, present their work and participate in collaborative discourse.
In addition to the work of the individual visual artists, collaborative exercises with the NYU Veteran Creative Writing program and Warrior Writers take place. Participants from the visual and literary programs partner on several projects whereby photographs serve as writing prompts. In return, the resulting poetry and narrative prose act as photographic prompts - thus closing the collaborative loop. The results are visually stunning and emotionally evocative works of art.
Each artist has an individual story. As individuals, their image-making and artistic process is uniquely their own. Some channel difficult emotions into creative works of art, while others turn the ordinary into the beautiful or the complex, simply because they now “see” with greater appreciation. Each week these artists meet to share their work and to further their artistic practice. Workshop participants interact with the public through exhibitions, a printed catalogue, public performances of Call Response collaborations and through various other discursive public forums.
Seeing Here Now is led each week by visual artist Erica Leone, who founded the program in 2010.
Purchase Seeing Here Now 2012 Exhibition Catalogue
Seeing Here Now is made possible in part with classroom space donated by the International Center of Photography and with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
