Amazing Women of the Lower East Side

Our Photography Programs Photography has been an integral part of The Lower Eastside Girls Club since our founding in 1996.

Photography was our first program and our first love! Although we teach many more classes now, photography is always on the roster and a part of all our other programs. Starting as young as eight years old, the girls begin on simple “point and shoot” cameras and gradually learn on the more advanced digital SLRs. The girls learn how to shoot, edit, print, curate and finally, how to hang their work in our on-site gallery.

They learn about the wider field of photography by visiting museums and galleries, attending guest lectures at the Girls Club, and by meeting and interning with working photographers.

Our photo students have won student awards from The Professional Women Photographers Association, displayed their work in art galleries and sold photographs to art collectors. We offer photography courses during the summer, after-school and on Saturday afternoons, under the guidance of our Photography Programs Director and Instructors. We have also collaborated with the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and The International Center of Photography.

— Lou Dembrow

A Note from Sami, our Photography Instructor: We are extremely fortunate at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, to be constantly surrounded by incredible women on a daily basis. The Amazing Women of the Lower Eastside at Art + Community Gallery celebrates a handful of the incredible women who have helped to inspire and create our Girls Club community.

In honor of Women’s History Month we chose to highlight seven local women who have dedicated their lives to causes of civic engagement and community service. Our Amazing Women are politicians, religious leaders, activists, nurses, poets, and artists, and each one of them had a unique view of the world to share with our girls.

For this project* the girls from our Digital Photography class visited the Amazing Women in their homes and in their work places to photograph and interview them. Through photography, we hoped to capture a glimpse of the passion and dedication that makes each of these women such innovators in their fields.

We are so grateful to these women for opening up their lives to us, and we hope that this project will inspire our girls to live their lives with similar meaning and purpose.

About The Lower Eastside Girls Club The Lower Eastside Girls Club provides a place where girls and young women 8–23 can grow, learn, have fun, and develop confidence in themselves and their ability to make a difference in the world. By delivering strong arts, literacy, science, health and leadership programs we provide girls with the vision and thetools to build, their future. All Girls Club programs develop environmental, entrepreneurial and ethical leadership in the girls we serve.

www.girlsclub.org

Photographers: Alexia Almonte Destiny Coleman Emily Sze Emmy Lewis Gabriela Kay Breton Giselle Gutierrez Gissary Castillo, India Gray, Ivory Bamba Nazahah Booth Jaelyn Cunningham Julia Zhou Myriah Rivera Nagnouma Fofana, Shi Hang Gao Stardasia Morales Xiu Qing Lin Yangzom Alma Joanne Zhou This project was led by our digital media and photography instructors: Lou Dembrow and Samantha Chan