Two Boys holding Hands / Bedford Ave - Brooklyn, New York

More Information

Mr. Castellana’s own statement on the South Williamsburg series provides a fine overview: “Street photography, in terms of the ‘unposed,’ is a practice that serves the compelling need to distill the ebb and flow of visually complex interactions into static form—forever fixed and with meaning. It is this desire to understand more deeply the rhythms of humanity that takes me to the streets in search of clarity. In their simplest sense, the images in this series form a social document of a people and a place; namely, a sect of Hasidic Jews known as the Satmars. This sect of Hasidic Jews was founded in Satu Mare, Romania by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum in the early 20th century. After WWII, Teitelbaum settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to lay the groundwork for a religious ideology that would launch one of the largest Hasidic movements in the world. Since Teitelbaum’s death, the Satmar community has grown exponentially and continues to thrive through closely observed traditions and social mechanisms. Between the fall of 2013 and 2014, I set out to photograph my neighbors in the one-half square mile area below Division Avenue, which demarcates the religious from the secular communities of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The photographs in this book are constrained to the ‘neighborhood view,’ since my outsider status made access to a more privileged look impossible. As an outsider, what I witnessed through my camera during that period was forever new and unique compared to my everyday routine and what the rest of the city’s inhabitants were pulsing to. For me, street photography is about the preservation of time and place—a kind of poetry that distills both in equal measure.” The South Williamsburg series broadly includes mothers and strollers, packs of children, men in traditional garb (but often holding cell phones or leaning against modern cars), storefronts covered with advertisements in Hebrew, empty alleys and courtyards, conversations, arguments, holiday festivities, and more. In this selection of seven photographs, I chose from what I find to be the series’ most compelling thread: perceptive images of children, especially those in which they are found navigating around adults and adulthood (and traditions and expectations, too) both literally and metaphorically."

Keywords

Boys
Girl
Hands
New York
culture
male
streets
outside
community
neighborhood
Children
Cityscapes
Communications
Figure (Male)
Figure (Female)
Photographs
Portrait
Religion