OPEN CALL for cell phone photos of Gowanus!
Re: place
Curated by Miska Draskoczy
The Gowanus neighborhood is changing every day, with buildings appearing and disappearing seemingly overnight. How do you keep up with the pace of this transformation?
For many of us who live or work in Gowanus, our phones have become a living document of the neighborhood’s rapid evolution. Cell phone photographs are a way to remember what once was–which buildings have been replaced by new development, which parks used to be vacant lots–and also serve as a future reference for what currently is. Memories of Gowanus’s industrial past still linger between luxury residential towers and the Gowanus Canal which has defined the neighborhood since the 19th century.
The proliferation of cell phone photography is arguably the most democratized and accessible form of art-making that exists today. The trillions of these images taken annually are used by nearly everyone to document the personal, mundane, remarkable, celebratory, clandestine, accidental or as a form of visual note-making. With smart phones now having near-unlimited storage capacity, these photographs are often lost in a deluge of thousands of images we see every day across dozens of social media platforms. As psychology professor and memory researcher Linda Hekel notes, “We’re so busy capturing photos that afterwards we don’t actually look at them.”
For this exhibition, we asked artists to mine their archives and submit the images they feel best represent Gowanus in transition, creating a portrait of the neighborhood’s past and rebirth. By re-contextualizing these images out of the digital abyss, we hope to provide a considered, intimate view into these artists’ visual diaries of a changing Gowanus.
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2025 (11:59pm)
Exhibition Dates: March 18th-22nd
Entry Fee: $15 for up to 5 artwork submissions
*These submission fees are used to provide program support and staffing for the fair. If this fee is any way a barrier please contact info@artsgowanus.org for a fee waiver!
IF YOU ARE ACCEPTED TO THIS EXHIBITION, ARTS GOWANUS WILL PRINT AND HANG YOUR WORK. EACH PIECE WILL BE PRICED AT $150.
*A suggested donation of 25% to Arts Gowanus on all artworks sold at the fair.
Eligibility: Artists who have lived in, worked in, or photographed Gowanus
- Submission does NOT guarantee acceptance into the exhibition
- Artists will be notified of acceptance on or before 3/10/2026