Fall 2016: Brooklyn Navy Yard Photo Contest

Last week we held our final Brooklyn Navy Yard Seasonal Photography Tour of 2016 (don’t worry if you missed it – our next one will be on January 22). Stay tuned because after we receive the last three finalist photos from this round, we’ll be unveiling the online voting for the year-end People’s Choice Award, and these finalists will be put on display in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92.

On this Election Day, our photography judge gets to make a much more pleasant and interesting selection than most of us casting our ballots at polling places. This season’s judge is Thyra Heder, an artist, author, illustrator, and woman of many talents who has called the Yard home for many years. If you’re a fan of children’s books, you may have seen her wonderful debut Fraidyzoo (on sale in the BLDG 92 gift shop), which she followed up with The Bear Report.>> Continue reading

Summer 2016: Brooklyn Navy Yard Photo Contest

Thanks to all the photographers who joined our summer installment of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Photography Tour. This season, the winning photographs will be selected by an artist based in the Yard, Tatiana Arocha.

Over the course of the summer, we got to know Tatiana and her work well, as she led a series of workshops for students in Pratt PreCollege, the summer school for high schoolers at nearby Pratt Institute. Through a discussion of her portfolio and a hands-on activity using some of her own artistic techniques, she helped this group of aspiring artists, designers, engineers, and architects better understand the skills and pathways they might need to succeed in their chosen field.>> Continue reading

Brooklyn Navy Yard Spring Photo Finalists, 2016

Thanks to the insights from BLDG 92 visiting artist C’naan Hamburger, we have three more finalists for our Brooklyn Navy Yard photography contest. These three photos were selected from a battery of 31 submitted from our spring photography tour back in April. After the winter submissions, we’re now halfway to our goal of 12 finalist photos, which will be put on display in BLDG 92 later this year.

Here are the spring finalists, in no particular order:

About this photo by Andy Omel, C’naan writes: “The minimal and heavily-textured image is quite striking. One can imagine a workplace where the face masks are worn by all and discarded without a second thought. The color and the geometry is bold and irresistible.”>> Continue reading

Brooklyn Navy Yard Spring Photo Submissions, 2016

The submissions are in from our spring photography tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This season’s finalists will be selected by C’naan Hamburger, one the 2016 BLDG 92 Visiting Artists. C’naan was kind enough to chat with us a bit about her work and what drew her to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“I liked the transporting quality of the Navy Yard,” she said. “I find it very much alive, and not at all what one would expect from walking by the decrepit, overgrown, Victorian area of the Navy Yard,” referring to the southwest corner of the Yard where the abandoned homes of Admirals Row stand. “I was struck by the layers of planning, and un-planning, and re-planning.”>> Continue reading

Curbed New York: Revamped Brooklyn Navy Yard Begins Its Slow Unfurling

Curbed NY Logo

Curbed New York, May 12, 2016

Camera Obscura – Nathan Kensinger

For many years, the Brooklyn Navy Yard has been a forbidding presence along the East River waterfront, hidden from the surrounding neighborhood behind walls and fences, with warning signs along its perimeter blaring out antiquated threats: This Installation Patrolled by Military Working Dogs! It Is Unlawful To Enter Without Permission Of The Commanding Officer! Security checkpoints block every entrance to the yard, while inside, patrol cars circle constantly and a security booth is set up at the MTA bus stop to check the identification of anyone disembarking. This month, however, several new projects are cracking open these barriers and granting the public access to parts of the Navy Yard that have been unseen for decades.

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Winter Photo Contest Winners

We’re happy to announce our first batch of winners for our annual Brooklyn Navy Yard photography contest. Participants joined our Seasonal Photography Tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on January 30, and you can see the full set of submissions here. Alyssa Fridgen, who spent the past several months working with BLDG 92 as a special curator, volunteered to select the finalists for the year-end contest, and her selections are below.

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Brooklyn Navy Yard Winter Photo Submissions, 2016

Last month, we held our first installment of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Seasonal Photography Tour for 2016. We had a small but dedicated group of photographers on what turned out to be a stunning day – and the photos clearly show that. Three of these photos will be selected by this season’s judge, Alyssa Fridgen. Alyssa has a keen eye for the Yard and historic landscapes, as she is Exhibit Content Manager for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, as well as being the Education Director and Curator and the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum in the Bronx.>> Continue reading

Announcing the Winners of the 2015 Brooklyn Navy Yard Photography Contest

For the last three years, we have had the honor and pleasure to see the Brooklyn Navy Yard change through the eyes of hundreds of very, very talented photographers. Our Seasonal Photography Tour participants have chronicled this amazing landscape from season to season, from year to year, creating an incredible record of the Yard at this moment of transformation.

2015 was no different – over four tours, we received 143 submissions from 23 different photographers, and those were winnowed down to 12 finalist photos by a panel of insightful judges. These finalists were then put on display in the first floor of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92 – they will remain up for the next several months, so please go check them out – and offered up for online voting by the public. And for the first time, this year we compiled the photos into a handsome wall calendar for Brooklyn Navy Yard staff, partners, and friends (if you’re still in the market for a 2016 calendar, there are a few left for sale at the BLDG 92 gift shop, open Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6pm.)>> Continue reading

Vote in the 2015 Brooklyn Navy Yard Photo Contest

Earlier this year, we completed our third series of special photography tours of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and once again, the Yard proved to be a compelling and multi-faceted tapestry for photographers in all four seasons. These two-hour explorations were led in partnership with the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, but we also had help from a generous group of artists and photographers. We received 143 submissions from 23 different visitors for our photography contest, and these four judges volunteered their time to winnow them down to the 12 you see below.

Now we need your help to pick just one. 

>> Continue reading

Gothamist: Deep Inside the Brooklyn Army Terminal

Gothamist, November 29, 2015

by Laren Evans / Photos by Tod Seelie

The four-million-square-foot Brooklyn Army Terminal has a long and interesting history as a military supply base, but these days, it’s still getting a handle on its new life as a commercial hub.

The federal government sold the terminal to New York City in 1981, and a few years later, a wholesale renovation began. It’s come a long way since then—notable tenants now include such diverse neighbors as the NYPD’s intelligence division, the chocolatier Jacques Torres, the New York City Bioscience initiative center and the Museum of Natural History.

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