Imprints
I have lived in Bushwick/East Williamsburg since 2020. Year after year, I am seeing a growth of community, a desire to come together to make our own lives, and to build a future. In this neighborhood, I have met lifelong friends and have been forever inspired.
Yet, structurally there is a transitional quality to everything, serving the purpose of the immediate and the nowness. How can you build if it’s constantly crumbling? New apartments are built, but they are not built to last. New community spaces are created, but for what community? Relationships are made, and then they are disassembled – it’s a kiss me now, or kiss me never attitude. Spaces built on spontaneity. That is both beautiful and full of holes.
I want to focus on the structures of the neighborhood and the dynamics of community. I want to photograph the beauty and the freedom, and the ephemerality of the dreams – both in the foundations of the neighborhood and in the people who live here.
Series of [12] Self-Portraits
Kiss me now or kiss me never - Raine Roberts on photo-sculpturalism and the transitional qualities of East Williamsburg.
…But what exactly does “community” and “progress” mean to a neighborhood whose residents are known for their impermanence? It is still too early to know. But what can be procured at this time is Imprints role as the prologue to a much larger, more socially pertinent saga. One whose impact will extend beyond Brooklyn, and certainly beyond New York City. Though Roberts captures only a microcosm of her own personal urban environment, what she does capture is integral to the human experience: trash…
