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.
A native of Colombia, much of Tatiana’s work is inspired by the flora and fauna of her native country’s rainforests. She builds these illustrations by using digital tools to combine and layer many different textures that she creates from different natural found objects – scraps of wood, metal, plastic, and even plants are easy to come by the Navy Yard, which is great fodder for her projects. She often finishes the pieces with gold highlights, evoking the rich beauty of the rainforest, but also hinting at the threat posed to these ecosystems by destructive gold mining.
One of Tatiana’s recent works you may have seen scattered around Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, and inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This work was, in part, inspired by the sensational appearance in December 2015 of a painted bunting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. An extremely rare visitor north of the Carolinas, this particular bunting likely just got blown a little off course, but with rising global temperatures and shifting climate zones, Tatiana saw the potential for more tropical species moving north. So she created an prattle of these exotic species that she affixed to trees and fences around the neighborhood.
Now, on to this season’s submissions (hover over each photo for photographer credits):
UPDATE: And the winners are …
First up is a photo by Sara Langsam (@drsaravmd), showing the Yard’s shipyard cranes reflected in the windows of Building 123, a beautiful brick building from 1900 (and the future home of the Brooklyn Roasting Company).
Nathan Harris managed to submit two photos that caught Tatiana’s eye. She said of the first, “I love this photo because of the contract and because for me, it captures this bizarre thing that happens in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where there is life next to old, industrial objects.”
Finally, Nathan’s second photo was taken just a few feet away from Sara’s, depicting old doors that had been removed from Building 123 during the renovation.
Turnstile Tours offers the Seasonal Photography Tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard four times throughout the year. The last tour of the 2016 season will be Saturday, October 29 at 11am. Get more information here, and advance ticket purchase is highly recommended. We also offer our Past, Present & Future Tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard every weekend 2-4pm, and other special themed tours of The Yard. All tours are offered in partnership with and begin at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, which offers free admission to three floors of exhibitions on the Yard’s past and present and a host of great special events and programs.
