I'm an 18-year-old photographer and recent Newburgh Free Academy graduate, and I already spend my time shooting these streets — the corners, the buildings, the people who've been here longer than I've been alive. This project turns that into something the whole city can see.
Over two weeks in August, I'll photograph Newburgh's living history: longtime residents, the places that hold our stories, and the everyday life that doesn't make the news. Alongside the portraits, I'll record short interviews — how the city has changed, what people want remembered. Then I'll bring it home as a free public exhibition and a printed report-back booklet that pairs each portrait with the person's own words, so the people in the photos and their neighbors can hold it in their hands.
I'm doing this in August on purpose. August is Black August — a month to remember Black history, resilience, and the freedom struggles of the people who built and held communities like ours. Newburgh's living history belongs in that tradition, and I want to document it and give it back during the same month it honors.
The exhibition and report-back will be free and open to the public at the Creative Communication Center, 140 South Street. It's a collaboration across generations — a young person's camera and a longtime resident's voice in the same frame — in a city that's usually described by outsiders. This is Newburgh telling its own story, and it leaves something behind: a printed record made by someone who's from here.