Photographers are communicators since the medium’s inception, whether functioning as fine artists, photojournalists, or commercial freelancers. In this present moment, photographs are at the fore of information documenting the ongoing war in Europe in press and social media. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia provides a historical moment calling for reflection and reassessment of humanity’s existence. Each generation supports the idea of progress, but how is it quantified?

Conflicts arise when outside forces disrupt the natural growth of individuals, groups, communities, villages, and countries. Humanity’s continuous battle of superiority over one another generates chaos and an upward trajectory of distractions to obscure the genuine truth of simply being defective. Consumed by power and material wealth, the act of war is to choose violence over peace—fighting on the streets of neighborhoods, cities, or capitals. Trepidation, mania, of the diverse people, leads us to a lack of peaceful coexistence.

Every generation has faced this dilemma, the retrospect of its inner darkness. The question is, how can the current generation become a catalyst that garners a positive outcome? How can we, as a society, solve our intrinsic attraction for cruelty and its damaging consequences?

It is unavoidable to reflect on the layers of isms within sex, gender, race, class, age, etc. And although my assessment of humanity seems bleak, there is a crucial group in our society that can garner change, and that is the artists. By exposing their experiences of their surroundings with unwavering determination, a dialogue is generated that confronts the ugliest truth of our society while also creating the possibility of progress. Pushing society’s boundaries and its falseness to reveal what is there.

In the words of James Baldwin from Creative America: “The precise role of the artist then is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.” 

Javier Álvarez (He/Him) is a Chilean photographer focused on social issues. After earning a BFA in Photography from ARCOS Arts and Communications Institute at Santiago de Chile, Javier worked internationally as a freelance editorial and press photographer. His studio is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, where he works with editorial and commercial clients. In addition to personal and commissioned work, Javier is a contributor to the Brazilian independent journalist collective, Mídia NINJA, and was co-founder and previous editor of MUD-MAGAZINE, an online platform for emerging photographers.

Daniel Aros-Aguilar (He/She/Them) is a queer artist born in Colombia, now based in Harlem. Daniel grew up in Florida, where their family immigrated seeking refuge. After graduating high school, Daniel transferred to BMCC in Manhattan. They became assistant to photographer Mike Ruiz and later began producing commercial and editorial work for Brianna Capozzi, Talia Chetrit, Danko Steiner, Miranda Lichtenstein, and Daniel Gordon. Daniel has shown at The Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, The Cohen Archive Gallery at CCNY, New York, New York, The Untitled Space, New York, New York, Humble Arts Foundation, New York, New York, and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gimpo, South Korea. Their work has been featured in print in The British Journal of Photography, Fotofilmic, Aint–Bad, SENSORED, and Maake Magazine, and online by InStyle, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Vogue. Daniel currently holds a residency at Bronx River Arts Center and is a recipient of the 2022 En Foco Photography Fellowship Program.

Dennis RedMoon Darkeem (He/Him) was born in the Bronx where he is currently based. He is of the wind clan of the Yamassee-Creek Seminole indigenous tribes, and his work demonstrates the merging influence of his environment and indigenous traditions. Through mixed media, Darkeem’s artistic practice embodies performance art, fine art, drawings, paintings, collages, photography, sculpture, and installations. Darkeem captures the indigenous essence of story-telling, Native American movements, and repurposing functions of conventional materials.

Carlos L. Esguerra (He/Him) was born in the Philippines and is now living in New York City. He was in the computer field for thirty-six years but took early retirement to devote his time to his rediscovered passion—photography. As a landscape and architecture photographer, he has received national and international awards in photography. In 2008, he received the Pamana ng Pilipino (Filipino Heritage) Award, the highest award given by the President of the Philippines to overseas Filipinos who excel in their fields of expertise. In 2011, he was awarded the Ani ng Dangal (Harvest of Honors) by the National Council on Culture and the Arts of the Philippines. In 2014, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award in Culture and the Arts from his alma mater, University of the Philippines in Quezon City.

Diana Guerra uses photography, film, and new media to focus on the complex duality that forms in the identities of Latinx immigrants living in New York City. I explore notions of family, home, and sense of belonging, which become ambiguous in this new environment. The simultaneous feeling of being neither here nor there opens up a conversation on how to visualize being in a third space that we create on a daily basis, and that shapes our diasporic identities. My work looks for accessibility in art-making. It signifies a practice where the notions of artist and subject become interchangeable. There is no master and no power imbalance of who has the knowledge or right to make it, but rather a search for connection and unity. I encounter others to become art in a moment of coalition. We search to feel, think and make in a bracket of time and space. We aim to recognize the force of our own lives while seeing and listening from the outside. We become closer to form at the same pace of hearing our voices become louder.

Carmen Lizardo (She/Her) is an Afro-Caribbean. She holds a BFA and MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. For Lizardo, using multiple media has been an essential part of her work, particularly alternative photo processes, printmaking, drawing, and video work. Lizardo has received awards at Women Studio Workshop, En Foco, and  New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship (nominated in both Painting and Photography). Lizardo was one of five American artists of Latino descent awarded an international travel and production grant from the U.S. Department of Cultural Affairs. Lizardo served fifteen years as a tenured faculty member for SUNY New Paltz’s Fine and Performing Arts program and is now solely dedicated to her studio practice. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York.

Paola Martínez Fiterre (She/Her) is a Cuban artist based in New York. Fiterre studied at the University of Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba until 2017. In 2019, she graduated from the International Center of Photography, New York, New York, where she was awarded the ICP Director’s Scholarship and the ICP New Media Grant. Her practice focuses on the representation of a female subject crossed by the experience of migration, the self-acceptance of her body, and its communication with nature and society. She was recently awarded the En Foco Photography Fellowship 2022 and the ICP X Tory Burch: A “New” New York, artists fellowship 2021. Paola is one of the artists recently selected for the 2022 Vermont Studio Center two-week residency program and fellowship. She has participated in multiple group shows in Havana, Cuba, New York, New York and its boroughs, San Francisco, California, Bordeaux, France, Geneva, Switzerland, and Mexico City, Mexico. In 2019 she presented her first solo show at Pen + Brush Gallery, sharing space with Renee Cox.

Jahi Sabater is a Fellowship MFA graduate of the Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts program, and the BFA program at Parsons, New School of Design. A Bronx native, he now works in Queens, New York making his studio-based photographic works. He has taught photography at Rutgers University, Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, and Lehman College. He was awarded the NYFA Fellowship for photography (2019), Brovero Photography Prize (2015), and was a participant in the Artist in the Marketplace program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2009).

Cinthya Santos-Briones (She/Her) is a nahua-mestiza participatory artist, popular educator and community organizer based in New York. She grew up in small towns between mountains and valleys surrounded by indigenous communities—Nahuas, Otomi and Tepehuas—in central Mexico. After studying Ethnohistory and Anthropology, for the next decade, Cinthya worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico City, Mexico, focused on issues of indigenous migration, codex, textiles, and traditional medicine. As an artist, her work adopts a multidisciplinary social practice that combines participatory art and the construction of collective narratives of self-representation. Through a variety of non-linear storytelling mediums, she juxtaposes photography, historical archives, writing, ethnography, drawings, collage, embroidery, and popular education. 

Nyasia Sylvester (She/Her) is an artist in all senses of the word—unconventional, versatile, sensitive, and ever-changing. She currently works as an art director and visual artist who specializes in photography but has explored diverse disciplines ranging from graphic design, filmmaking to cataloging and producing, among others. She stumbled around for seven years trying to find her footing as a photographer, and essentially, find her voice. It wasn’t until certain life-changing experiences and an acceptance into the D&AD New Blood Shift program that her views, creativity, and life shifted immensely. She spends her time focusing on creating bodies of work that tell stories about her community, family, love, her experiences as a Black woman, grief, and self-exploration.

Marisol Díaz-Gordon (She/Her) is a Bronx-born and raised Puerto Rican photographer. She was the former Program Director of En Foco from 1998–2011. She is currently working on her MFA in Digital Media at Lehman College, CUNY. She received a BA focusing on photography from City College, CUNY (2002) and an AAS in Advertising Arts/Computer Graphics from Bronx Community College, CUNY (1993). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and alternative spaces throughout New York, including by En Foco (2000 and 2011), George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York (2008), and Taller Boricua Gallery, New York, New York (2006). In 2008, she was nominated by En Foco for a commission with George Eastman Museum to document landscapes in Puerto Rico. That work traveled to such venues as the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (2009) and is currently held in the permanent collection of George Eastman Museum. From 2016 to 2018, ARTViews Gallery at Montefiore Medical Center collected, commissioned, and exhibited her work. She is also a participant in the Bronx Artist Documentary Project (2014).

Bronx Kreate Hub is a workspace and community incubator in Mott Haven that supports the growth and continued success of local artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. Community members represent a diverse array of specialties, including animators, graffiti artists, photographers, designers, and community organizations like En Foco and the Mott Haven Film Festival among others. Studio spaces are available at an array of affordable price points, reaffirming Kreate Hub’s commitment to building community through access. 

The En Foco South Bronx Art Tour is a special event organized by En Foco consisting of the opening of three special exhibitions on June 11 across two venues. Reveal: The 2022 Fellowship Awardee Exhibitions and Night Vision: Marisol Diaz-Gordon open at Kreate Hub Bronx. Reflejos/Reflections: Adeline Lulo and Erika Morillo opens at The Romanesque Revival Row House Gallery, also in the South Bronx. 

Reveal features the 2022 winners of the En Foco photography fellowship, and Reflejos/Reflections features Adeline Lulo and Erika Morillo, both previous winners of the En Foco Photography Fellowship and both photographers of Dominican heritage. The exhibit focuses on the Dominican experience, documenting, uplifting, and celebrating their families, their communities, and their cultural legacies.

Reveal: The 2022 Fellowship Exhibitions is on view from June 11 – July 12, 2022, by appointment only. 
Reflejos/Reflections: Adeline Lulo & Erika Morillo is on view from June 11 – July 13, by appointment only.
Night Visions: Marisol Diaz-Gordon is on view from June 11 – October 1, 2022, on the facade of Kreate Hub Bronx.

For more information, please contact [email protected].