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Snapshots of Queens: Documenting Our Streets

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Date recordedJune 10, 2020DescriptionThis video is a compilation of crowdsourced submission to the Queens Memory Covid-19 Project. The video includes written accounts and images of our contributors' experiences of documenting Queens, on Memorial Day weekend and during a Black Lives Matter protest. Contributors recite written texts that they have shared through the project for archival preservation.

Natalie Milbrodt (Audio Submission: 2020-6-9):“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking… some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.” Christopher Isherwood wrote that 90 years ago in Berlin, between the two world wars. An outsider from England, he witnessed rising fascism and a society and political situation with no certain outcomes. I often think of the work we do as the Queens Memory Project as an opportunity to create an historical record for people whose lives will not overlap with my own. And I turn to Isherwood to think about my role in this time. Am I a camera, my shutter open, quite passively recording and not thinking? Was he, really? As an archivist, I feel my choices of who we record, when, what we record, make us active participants in the shaping of popular understanding, both now and especially in the future. But I also feel a certain remove. You’ll see this footage I took of a Black Lives Matter march was from my own fire escape, literally above the fray, outside of it like Isherwood observing life in Berlin from his boarding house window. And what is the role of someone who documents but does not march? Is that valuable? Is it valid? And by choosing to make this my contribution, am I tipping my hand too much? Curtailing our opportunity to serve as a platform for opposing perspectives within the communities we serve? Because what we say and do has real consequences, now in this present moment. We too are a country on the precipice of transformative change and uncertain outcomes. So, I will continue to do my best to rise to this moment, thinking of our shared future and contributing my own, imperfect record of being alive in this time and place.

Sam Addeo (Written Submission: 2020-5-26, 2020-5-28/ Audio Submission: 2020-6-9) :This photo was captured on Memorial Day Weekend. I was taking a bike ride from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Roosevelt Island and passed by Rockaway Brewery. Instead of closing shop, the brewery moved its operations to the vacant parking lot across the street...Everyone on this street was either walking to or from Rockaway Brewery! We all wanted a street drink....I captured this photograph on Citi Bike on my way to Roosevelt Island on Memorial Day Weekend...I took a two hour bike ride through Queens and stopped to take some photos along the way. I was happy to see everyone outside enjoying the city's green space and the nice weather, like me.Participantscreator: Jo-Ann WongContributor: Natalie MilbrodtContributor: Sam AddeoPlace of recordingVirtualGeographic coverageQueens (New York, N.Y.)LanguageEnglishRights statementCopyright held by: Queens Public Library

CollectionQueens Memory COVID-19 Project Collection

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Snapshots of Queens: Documenting Our Streets