Tywain Harris, "Repetition Becomes Rhythm."
Tywain Harris is airborne, one leg raised at the knee as the other leaves the ground, foot pointed forward. Big, noise cancelling headphones fit tightly over his ears, blocking out the world. If a viewer leans in close, they can almost hear the hum and whoosh of traffic: the nearby buses on Congress Avenue, the cars heading down Vernon Street, an occasional siren as an ambulance pulls into Yale New Haven Hospital. This is the Hill, on a sun-soaked afternoon where everything seems, momentarily, all right with the world.
Harris’ work, entitled “Repetition Becomes Rhythm,” is part of Urban Frames, an exhibition of photographs from Wábi Gallery’s FOCUS Fellows, FOCUS alumni, and patrons at the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL). Part documentary, part homage, and all heart, the show finds its focus in picturing the community, from formal, dramatic portraiture and self-portraiture to moving photographs of Black boys and men who are just trying to grow up.
The exhibition runs on the library’s first floor, just beyond the reference desk, through the end of June. It doubles as a teaser for Evolution, a full exhibition of FOCUS Fellows’ work at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art that runs June 24-29.
Top: Kim Weston: "It creates an opportunity for these students to get their work seen by people who are not necessarily going to a gallery." Bottom: Nicholas A Clement, "Untitled" and Alex Scarlet Fuentes, "A Placid Illusion."
“What I’m doing with Wábi is making these connections in the community and creating a space where students can learn that photography is not just about taking photographs, it’s also about making sure that these photographs are seen,” said Wábi Founder and Director Kim Weston, praising the vital work that the library does. “Public places, public spaces, government buildings, libraries—they’re places that get more foot traffic than a gallery. It creates an opportunity for these students to get their work seen by people who are not necessarily going to a gallery.”
The collaboration began earlier this year, after a grant from the David T. Langrock Foundation allowed the NHFPL to offer free art classes at each of its five branches. Downtown, Weston launched a free, multi-part photography course in April, with sessions that ran through the end of May. Of 10 people who initially registered, six finished the program.
Only one, Angela Butler, ultimately submitted work for the show. In her pieces, focused on both self-portraiture and still life, Butler is particularly interested in the character and quality of light, which falls over her frame in long, bright bands as she poses for the camera. In one photograph, she rests one hand over her hip, leaning in a sort of modern contrapposto. She smiles, her eyes locked on the camera, and the room is full of light.
Angela Butler, Self Portrait and Abril Rosario, "The Dandelion."
For Weston, that’s part of the point. “We live in a space where a lot of times we create these boxes,” she said. “I want to make sure that these students realize that” those boxes can and should be broken down. “That once you learn the rules [governing the world], you can break the rules.”
For the library branch, which for years ran a gallery downstairs, it’s also a way to get back to showcasing visual art amidst the books and programs where library patrons may happen upon it and find themselves delighted to be in this world. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic cut short shows at the gallery. Years later, “this is kind of a beautiful extension of that,” said Business and Nonprofit Librarian Alexandria Robison.
Around the gallery, that extension has come to life in vibrant color (and at times, with a judicious use of greyscale), as drenched in photo history and experiment as it is a celebration of New Haven and her diverse and polyphonic people.
Top: Bethany Edwards, "Untitled."
In “The Dandelion,” for instance, young photographer Abril Rosario has captured educator Richard Cowes, a member of the Golden Hill Paugusset Tribe who is a GED facilitator at New Haven Adult & Continuing Education. In the photograph, taken in the city’s Westville neighborhood, Cowes stands in three-quarters profile, looking towards the horizon beneath his shades. He is tall, barrel-chested, and looks regal, unafraid.
“This was my first time directing models, and he was pretty chill,” Rosario remembered as she looked at the photo on a recent Wednesday. After finding the rich, red-orange brick of the wall, she studied Cowes, from his beat black top and shades to his necklaces, made of quahog shells gathered at the West Haven shoreline. She leaned on the photo history she’d learned, listening to her gut when something still didn’t feel complete.
“I was looking for a contrast,” she remembered. When she realized something was missing, she plucked a single dandelion for him to hold. In the photograph, it’s a spot of bright light, just beneath his sternum. A sliver of his hand is still visible. “It balanced everything out. It makes him seem strong and soft at the same time.”
Top: Alex Scarlet Fuentes, "Mountainous Edge" and Nickolas E. Santaella, "Break Time." Bottom: Fuentes.
That approach resonated for Alex Scarlet Fuentes, who based her photographs on the work of American photographer Bill Jacobsen, whose out-of-focus images stayed with her when she first learned about them. A sophomore at James Hillhouse High School, Fuentes lives in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood, but knew she wanted to shoot downtown when it came time to begin photographing New Haven. She thought of Jacobsen’s urban scenes, distorted by the blur and soft focus, and “I just took it and ran,” she said.
“I like taking pictures of stuff that you can interpret,” she added. In a culture obsessed with images in sharp, pristine focus, she was also particularly drawn to the idea of Bokeh—the very quality of something being blurred. Her photographs weren’t just out-of-focus mistakes or experiments in long exposure: they were deliberate distortions of a site people thought they knew. They asked, and still ask, that their viewer take a second look.
For Weston, that’s part of the program, which is now in its fourth year in New Haven. During their weekly sessions, students learn about photographers like Lorna Simpson, Dawoud Bey, Carrie Mae Weems, Dread Scott, Sally Mann, Catherine Opie, Jacobson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and the recently-late Nona Faustine. But Weston also pushes them as social beings, getting them to put down their phones and talk to people. It taps into the history of photography as both a documentary and social medium, and their ability to reclaim and reshape that.
Brayden Zawadowski, "Frozen Ash."
That was true for student Brayden Zawadowski, a sophomore at Sound School whose photographs “A Nature’s Rest” and “Frozen Ash” both picture people in unconventional ways, pushing the bounds of traditional portraiture for something much more interesting.
In the first, taken in the Connecticut woods, his subject reclines on an old log, eyes closed. They are still, but there’s nothing urgent or alarming here: just a reminder of how intertwined our daily lives are with the nature around us. So too in the latter, as a hand holds out a cigarette over a snow-covered yard. Beyond an arm, the figure’s thumb and second finger hold the cigarette gingerly, as if there’s still life left in it.
“Kim pushed us to do a lot of things we weren’t already comfortable with,” including talking to people on the street, Zawadowski said. He ultimately chose to focus on drug and alcohol abuse, a topic that has affected him both personally and as a New Havener, where substance use disorder is still very much a problem in the city.
Top: Jaylin Ambrose-Cooper with his portrait "Timeless." Bottom: Nickolas E. Santaella, "Resonance."
That sense of experiment extended to both Harris and Jaylin Ambrose-Cooper, a senior at Hill Regional Career High School who was particularly influenced by the work of LaToya Ruby Frazier. When he started thinking about people and places to photograph, Ambrose-Cooper enlisted the help of his 6-year-old niece, Milo. Then his mind drifted to a location: the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the top of East Rock.
In the photograph, a spin on the tradition of self-portraiture, Ambrose-Cooper looks toward the monument, his back to the camera. Milo, meanwhile, looks out at the viewer.
“It’s more of the older generation looking towards the past, and the younger generation looking towards the next thing to do,” he said.
“Repetition Becomes Rhythm,” meanwhile, also tugs on that idea of the self-portrait as an expansive medium, in which the boundaries are both porous and meant to be tested. When Harris returned to the program as an alum this year, he already knew that Weston would push him to picture and document the world around him differently. His images reflect experiments in long exposure, some taken just off Davenport Avenue in the Hill.
In the photograph, faded to grayscale, Harris jumps rope, framed between two buildings as his long shadow falls over the grass. On his right, a hand blurs, too busy with the movement of the rope to stay still. His head tilts down, almost devotional. But the city, with its bursts of nature, is his church: he literally leaps as the Hill expands around him. Something about the image feels timeless, as if it could be 1985 or 2005 or 2025.
“I really was looking for an outlet to express myself,” he said. “I wanted to do something different. This, it’s a gateway.”