[Images via helloicp]
We recently caught up with East Village resident Frank Franca to discuss his installation at 250 Bowery, where the International Center of Photography (ICP) will call home next spring.
Franca, a photographer and longtime faculty member at ICP who has lived in the East Village since 1982, calls the project #helloicp. Participants can go to the #helloicp website or to Instagram (adding the hashtag #helloicp to their photos) and upload images, which will then live stream to the installation in the front windows at 250 Bowery, which is just south of Houston.
He shared a few thought about #helloicp with us.
About working on the project:
The opportunity to see photographers from all over the world presenting themselves and their cultures without any context or filters from media sources or institutions has been very revealing. It has shown me that what makes us all the same is far greater than our differences.
No matter where one lives, we all want the same things and live remarkably similar lives even though the circumstances and surroundings might be very different. Politicians can be at war with each other, but the people wherever they are all want the same things. They want to build their lives with their families and to thrive. They want to be left to live in peace.
As a photographer, the opportunity to interact with other photographers from all over the world who share my same passions has made all of this even more pronounced and remarkable.
About the new ICP space:
I am doing this in great part to welcome ICP into the neighborhood. ICP is planning to embrace our community in a big way. They have many plans for being a dynamic and active force in the neighborhood. The first floor of the center on the Bowery will have large public areas which will be free and open to the public without requiring buying a ticket for the museum exhibitions further inside.
These public areas will include a cafe with indoor and outdoor sidewalk seating and a bookstore. There will also be a gallery in this public area dedicated showing new contemporary works that push the limits of the newest technology and challenge the notion of what contemporary photo based work is about. This area will be a lively and thought provoking meeting place for our community.
About the new Curator in Residence at the 250 Bowery space:
Charlotte Cotton has a background as a curator of photography in London's Victoria and Albert Museum and also the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is an intelligent and innovative curator with her pulse on the rapidly changing times in photography when billions of people around the world with mobile phones carry a hi-definition camera in their pocket. She understands how image savvy young people are today and ICP, in part, will be addressing that. It will be fascinating and a lot of fun to see what she does with the new space.
#helloicp is on view through Nov. 1. New viewing times are 4 p.m. to midnight daily.
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