Isaiah Winters' multimedia project inside a shipping container celebrates the National Park System and the ancestral indigenous lands.

It’s one of 18 containers at Emily Roebling Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park for this year’s Photoville festival.

“To have this, I think the shipping container makes people, they are just comfortable,” said Dave Shelley, who co-founded Photoville along with Laura Roumanos and Sam Barzilay.

What You Need To Know

  • Photoville is a photography festival in its 12th year at Brooklyn Bridge Park and locations across the five boroughs

  • There are 85 exhibitions at more than 25 destinations featuring the work of over 300 photographers

  • Photoville runs through June 18 at Brooklyn Bridge Park but displays in other locations may be on view longer

  • There will be 18 shipping container photo displays, the first time Photoville has used them for the festival since 2019

The containers are part of Photoville for the first time since before the pandemic. The free photography festival is all about bringing greater access to photography to everyone.

“Photoville is a community village destination, and a place where folks can gather and experience and discover visual storytelling from photographers from all over the world, not just here in New York City,” Roumanos said.

There are 85 exhibitions in all around the five boroughs, with over 25 destinations and work from over 300 photographers. Fifty of the exhibitions are at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Photoville’s home since the beginning.

“We have the opportunity for community, and I think that’s what people have missed especially during the pandemic is actually coming together in one spot seeing all the work and being able to talk about it and share that as a collective community,” Shelley said.

There are plenty of open air exhibitions, and the containers, which provide the opportunity to show photography with disclaimers on more sensitive topics that couldn’t be shown on the open air displays.

“We are showing the full spectrum of the human experience, so the containers give us an opportunity to have a lot of playful things, but also some things that are quite intense,” Roumanos said.

Photoville runs at Brooklyn Bridge Park though June 18, some of the displays in other locations may be on view longer. Find out more at https://photoville.com/