The Islands of New York: A Conversation with Accra Shepp

The Islands of New York is a photographic project to rediscover New York City’s maritime nature. This is a city of over 40 islands, with rivers, bays, inlets, coves, and estuaries. Though water surrounds the city, this most obvious feature of the landscape is largely ignored and forgotten. I am interested in recording the waterfront as it exists today, how people are using it now. Towards this end, I am finding those areas where the interface between the urban environment and the natural coast is most acute. I am also exploring those areas which have somehow remained “wild” and un-built.
This project seeks to sensitize viewers to the condition of “nature” in an urban environment and allow them to reconsider how the built environment and the natural environment necessarily occupy a single space. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the continued sea rise associated with climate change, this has become an even more urgent need, as it is difficult to know how to protect something if you don’t know what it looks like.

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Accra Shepp Bio:

Accra Shepp is an artist and writer, based in New York and teaches at the School of Visual Arts. His images have been exhibited worldwide and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other institutions. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and the New York Review of Books as well as his artist’s book Atlas (in the collection of the New York Public Library and the Whitney Museum Library), and Windbook, an artist-book installation at the National Library of Luxembourg. His book, Radical Justice: Lifting Every Voice was published in 2022 by Convoke. Most recently he is the recipient of the Cullman Scholars Fellowship from the New York Public Library and additionally was a senior Fulbright Fellowship to Indonesia. He has also participated in residencies at MacDowell, Civitella, and Light Work. In addition to his project, “The Islands of New York” he is working on a show titled, “The Monhegan Wildlands” with the Bodoin College Art Museum and is completing work on his second book, “The Covid Journals.”