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Meet photographer Emon Hassan and explore the photographs in his pop-up exhibit for "I Dream of the Heights"!
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Meet photographer Emon Hassan and explore the photographs in his pop-up exhibit for "I Dream of the Heights"!
To photographer Emon Hassan, Washington Heights is a magical place. "It seems like it exists on a different plane than the rest of Manhattan," he told Untapped New York. In 2015, Hassan set out to capture the magical feeling of his neighborhood. Using his iPhone and a series of photo editing apps popular at the time, he created otherworldly images of familiar places. In his new book, I Dream of the Heights, Hassan presents those images along with a poetic narrative. Photographs from the book are currently on display inside Our Saviour's Atonement Church and you can join Hassan for an exclusive tour of the exhibition this January!
Tuesday, January 14th at 6 PM ET: Join photographer Emon Hassan for an exclusive evening at his new exhibit inside a historic Washington Heights church!
Free to members at the Insider tier or higher. Registration opens on December 31st, 2024.
"I consider this my home," Hassan says of Washington Heights, where he has lived since 1999. "I'm very close to this neighborhood because I've lived here this long. I've seen the changes in the architecture and the landscape. I have hidden places here and there that feel like my little secrets, but probably everybody feels like that up here."
"That's what I wanted to convey by using the photos and giving them a certain look," says Hassan, "It went beyond just documenting a place to more of a dream-like look so that you almost feel like you know this place, but you also don't."
Hassan achieved the dream-like look by manipulating colors, layering filters, and sometimes superimposing multiple images on top of each other. "It was that time when a lot of photo apps were coming out so I thought, 'Why don't I use them and use them all and see how far I can transform my photos into something else, see what emerges out of that.' What emerged were these little moments that felt like mini-stories."
Before compiling the photographs for a book, Hassan displayed two of the images in an exhibit at the Inwood branch of the New York Public Library. "The reaction I get from a lot of people who have been living here a long time is that they recognize the places but it feels like somewhere else, another Washington Heights, another Inwood," Hassan shares.
This uncanny feeling doesn't come solely from the aesthetics of the photographs, but also from the passage of time they show. "A lot of those scenes in the photos don't look like that anymore because buildings have gone up, things have changed, the landscape has shifted a little." Like a fleeting dream, some of the scenes Hassan captured now exist solely in memory.
When Hassan decided to turn the series of photographs into a book, he found that poetry was the most appropriate way to further express the stories contained within the images. After arranging the photographs in sequence, he sat down to write. The words that emerged are based on what he remembered feeling at the time the image was captured, and whatever story came to him at the moment looking at the image once again years later.
The stories explore vignettes of the New York City neighborhood. Hassan imagines narratives for dog walkers, groups of friends, and couples in the park, reflects on loss, finds humor and joy, and pays homage to the people and places of Washington Heights.
At Hassan's new pop-up exhibit inside Our Saviour's Atonement Church in Washington Heights, the photographs are presented without the accompanying poetry from the book so viewers can find their own narratives within the frame. The historic stone church, built in the 1920s, isn't a typical formal gallery, but it was exactly the kind of local venue Hassan envisioned for displaying his work. It's also convenient that the church is mere steps away from his home!
"I'm at the point now where I'm rediscovering things through other people's experiences and eyes," Hassan says, "People point something out and tell me their version of the story of what they see when they don't read the poems, but they just see the pictures. I really love that because they are making it personal. I love that."
Admire the architecture of the church and discover what you see in Hassan's photographs when Untapped New York Members meet the artist for a private exhibit tour on January 14th!
The I Dream of the Heights pop-up exhibition is on view through January 24, 2025, at Our Saviour’s Atonement, 178 Bennett Avenue (189th Street) New York, NY 10040. The gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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