FACING NATURE (2025)
Performance, Photography
COMMISIONED BY:
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
SPECIAL THANKS:
Seward Park Conservancy, NYC Parks,
US Forrest Service, Weinberg Senior Center at Manny Cantor, Educational Alliance
RELATED PUBLICATIONS:
Care as Kinship PDF
This exhibition of nature portraits developed from a series of photokinetic stewarding workshops that brought together seniors from the Weinberg Senior Center and the indigenous pollinator meadow of Seward Park Conservancy. Participants explored digital and alternative photographic processes while engaging in environmental stewardship, transforming how participants perceive and connect with place. Each piece reflects the powerful intersection of creative expression and environmental care, cultivating kinship between people and the more-than-human world that sustains urban community life.
Credit: Choreographed by
Photokinetic Stewardship workshops use movement, photography, and acts of care to create intergenerational kinship through a collaboration between Weinberg Senior Center and Seward Park Conservancy’s indigenous pollinator meadow. This four-part salon series introduces seniors to photography as a creative expression and nature documentation, fostering deeper connections with local ecosystems. Participants (many newcomers to photography) explore digital and alternative processes while engaging in environmental stewardship and fostering a deeper connection to the nature of Seward Park, which many already consider a second home.
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Workshop activities span movement composition and botanical collection, lighting techniques for nature portraits, cyanotype printing, and nature face collages using garden materials. Each salon begins with embodied introductions—sharing names alongside movements inspired by the meadow, observations of seasonal changes, or memories triggered by place. The introductions aim to ground participants in the physical space but also foster connection with each other so they can engage comfortably and wholeheartedly in the activities.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need”
These practices help inspire people to notice, to pay attention, to laugh about trees, and we believe that this inquiry and joy can spark further interspecies kinship and care. We observe that caring for trees also cares for us, in a reciprocal relationship.