Mr. Williams began photographing life in the southeastern Queens neighborhood of St. Albans, where he grew up, after the foreclosure crisis wrecked much of the largely black and middle-class community.
St. Albans covers about three square miles, with Tudor houses and leafy streets that are home to more than 34,000 residents who take pride in their community’s roots. Most of the residents are African-American or African-Caribbean, although in recent years buyers of distressed properties have added a growing Latino and South Asian population.
The result of Mr. Williams’s work is a growing collection of portraiture, documentary and street photography that shows legacy and pride.
“There’s a whole bunch of stories to tell from the people who lived there,” he said. “I feel there are too many photos of black people who struggle in America and there’s not much else.”
There is a quietness in Mr. Williams’s photos, but also the steady strength of day-to-day life. The photos are images of what makes a community home.
4 comments:
This is great to show this, BUT, St. Albans has been slowly going down hill and is not what it once was. While nowhere near downtown or South Jamaica, a drive recently through St. Albans, showed the typical crappy retail (99 cent stores, etc), illegal signs all over, garbage issues and crappy third world style apartments that have replaced one family homes. Crime has also gone up in that area. But what do you expect, 12 years of useless Councilman Leroy Comrie, his personal replacement, I. Daneek Miller has not burst out of the staring gate with great things, a poor community board.
While still a decent neighborhood with some great homes, it it is a a shame because this could be a great little community, instead it is slowly going the way of the rest of Jamaica. I cannot imagine five years down the road if things in Jamaica do no improve.
A lousy formal portrait of the kid sitting on the picnic table: fotog didn't clean the garbage at the bottom nor notice the divided background behind his head.
Yawn. Mediocrity.
Banksters made out during the real estazte boom, selling mortgages (and pocketing commissions) to people they knew would be foreclosed on, selling off the mortgage in MBS and making more money, then buying back the foreclosed properties at distressed prices and reselling to Asians.
This is happening in mostly all the black communities. Greedy banks and new homeowners who knew from the beginning they could not afford a high mortgage. The outcome is homes bought and remodeled and made in 2 and 3 family homes which changes the makeup of the community. And I bet in another few years it will happen all over again. What we are witnessing is death to black neighborhoods.
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