FACES OF HARLEM

A visual Love letter in 100 portraits commemorating Harlem and its Beautiful Everyday People.

FACES OF HARLEM founded in 2021, is my LOVE letter to our beloved Harlem Community celebrating the Legacy of the Harlem Renaissance with 100 Harlem Portraits.

FOH seeks to act as a cultural mediator, presenting work and people that are often marginalized in this country, with a particular emphasis on highlighting Black and Latinx cultures. We want to increase the presence of visual art within Harlem and demonstrate how it can be made more engaging and welcoming for diverse audiences.

In disinvested, low-income communities of color, art acts as tools for strengthening cultural identity and processing trauma. With this in mind, photographer, community organizer, and long-time Harlem resident Sade Boyewa El launched FOH in hopes of using photography and oral history as vectors to facilitate an understanding of the past by envisioning a shared, more equitable future. 

FOH’s largest public art initiative is a free outdoor photography exhibition that builds on the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance to celebrate the beauty of the Harlem community. For our inaugural edition in 2021, we presented 100 street portraits by 10 photographers in four locations across the Harlem community.

For the second edition of FOH, 2022, we invited a new group of 10 contemporary photographers, as well as three youth photographers, to capture more personal images of our Harlem neighbors and presented them in Morningside Park. By moving from the street to the indoors, our aim was to rebuilding connections that were lost during the past years of physical isolation. We documented Harlemites in their intimate spaces to give our audience a deeper look into family life, creativity, work, faith, relationships, and love within our community.

“Harlem is rapidly changing before our eyes. This is why I want to capture and document these moments with my camera, these faces and peoples stories. Because in the blink of an eye it will all be gone and no one will remember what it used to be. That which will never be again.”

~Sade Boyewa El