City As Portrait: Culture Lab

About this event

Culture Lab: City as Portrait brings together photographic works created by young photographers exploring what can happen when traditional photographic practice becomes a starting point for experimentation.

Working with Buffalo photographer DJ Carr, students engaged with the tried-and-true practice of street photography, learning to observe, respond to, and photograph the city as it unfolds around them. These experiences were bookended by the highly controlled studio practice of photographer Nando Alvarez-Perez, where students worked with composition, lighting, objects, and intentional image-making. Between these two approaches, students began to consider photography not simply as a way to document what they see, but as a way to construct, manipulate, interpret, and make something of their own.

The works in this exhibition begin with those foundational photographic practices. What they become, however, is something much more personal. Each student took the tools, techniques, and ways of seeing they encountered and pushed them into their own direction, creating unique and vibrant photographic works that engage with downtown Buffalo through their individual perspectives.

The exhibition reflects that movement from learning the fundamentals of making a photograph to discovering what a photograph can become. The city is the shared point of departure, but the work is ultimately shaped by the distinct ways these young photographers chose to see, interpret, and make it their own.