Izzy El Nems and Sophia Wilson are both native New Yorkers. They mention it because, they point out, that seems like more and more of a rarity these days. Across each of the city’s five boroughs, gentrification and rising rents mean that New York is becoming inaccessible for many young creatives like themselves, even if they’ve lived in the city their entire lives.
But Izzy and Sophia aren’t bitter about that reality. Instead, they’re nostalgic and passionate about capturing the city as it changes around them, through the faces of those they love the most. To that end the creative directors have created a new, personal photography series called Lovers & Friends, comprising of intimate portraits of New Yorkers like themselves.
“As we’ve grown up, we have seen the city being whitewashed and gentrified at a rapidly increasing pace, to the point where we no longer recognise the places we’ve known and loved,” Sophia says. “All of our favourite shops and restaurants are now barely able to stay afloat, and we find ourselves struggling to find apartments to live in with affordable rent. This photo series is not only our love letter to NYC, but our attempt at reclaiming the heart and soul of the city.”
Shot in their bedrooms, each image is paired with a short story from its subjects about growing up in NYC. It’s not just a document of a changing city, but an ode to New York itself, created from the belly of encroaching gentrification that’s fast disintegrating the communities these creatives grew up with.
“This project documents those born and raised, bringing their faces, bedrooms, pastimes, and eclectic personalities to the surface,” the pair said in a statement of intent. “New York is a grid and we’ve made our own map of the people and bedrooms we wish to highlight.”
An ongoing project, the pair plan to eventually exhibit their images this September within the city. “Our show will create a community and physical space that actively welcomes people from all walks of life, as opposed to solely the typical museum-goer crowd”, says Sophia. Izzy adds: “We’re keeping the location disclosed as of right now but the show rings true to the photographs at hand and series at large. From the jump, Lovers & Friends aims to create urban islands of inclusion in a city where gentrification and mass commercialisation has led to urban islands of exclusion. The images highlighted in the show will take up space lost to many of us born and raised due to the refurbishment, rebuilding, and modernisation of downtown NY. True to the series’ roots, all are welcome.”
Jahan Family
“Sisters Arifa (21), Israt (19), Ifrath (11), and Lisa (3) photographed on Argyle Road, where they have been living since 2012 with their two additional sisters and parents. The three oldest were born in Bangladesh, Ifrath was born in Dubai, and the two youngest were born in Brooklyn. From Bangladesh to Dubai to Flatbush, the eight-person family first shared a one-bedroom apartment on the first-floor of the same building, living in two bunkbeds. Ten years later, in 2021, the family moved to a three bedroom apartment upstairs. NY is never easy, and the Jahan family’s move was anything but that, yet over time Argyle Road and its neighbouring Bengali community has left an overwhelming impact on Arifa and her sisters. Originally not speaking a word of English, the family would be joined by their neighbours to various appointments, where members of their block would translate from English to Bengali, creating a patchwork of togetherness that has thread a new life for each of them individually and as a unit.”
Jupiter
Jupiter photographed on Malcolm X Blvd. Born on a Thursday in November at Jacobi Medical Center in Morris Park, BX, NY, Jupiter grew up all over the city, bouncing around BK from Canarsie to the Flatlands to Bushwick until finding home in 2021 in Bedstuy, where she lived first with a lover, then on her own, and now with her sister Denise. Thinking of her childhood, Jupiter recalls that “growing up in Fordham felt warm even in December”, the chant, “coco mango cherry” stuck in her mind as she begged her mom to lick coconut gelato from a collapsed dixie cup. When Jupiter is home, all she sees is memories, bad and downright ugly ones, but the joy of her loved ones in her house starts the journey of fixing them: “so truly my home is with the joy of my people”.
Lula and Michael
Lovers Lula and Michael on East 7th. Lula was born on Broome St. in a converted silk factory and Michael in Staten Island, his house located on what is considered the highest point of NYC and down the block from Stapleton Houses, where Wu Tang Clan members RZA, Shyheim and Ghostface Killah once lived. Lula and Michael now live together in the former Seventh Street Squat, a five-story tenement that historically sheltered NYC underdogs — first immigrants and their families and later squatters, who began moving into the building in the late 70s. Originally found on Craigslist by a best friend of hers, East 7th St. was home to eight women over two years.
Seashell
Seashell, photographed on Vanderbilt Ave in what used to be an industrial building turned fire station turned home, the later designed decades ago by an architect for his wife. After she passed away in the early 90s, the architect sold the building to Seashell’s boyfriend’s parents. The building, nearly a century old, was later split into two adjacent apartments, where the four of them now live, parents and lovers separated by a thick concrete wall. Seashell spent her youth between Canarsie and Mill Basin in Brooklyn. Today, many of you may know her as the monarch of neighbourhood spot Dr. Clark’s.
Talya and Tyler
Twins Talya and Tyler, photographed on Bleecker St in one of the last rent stabilised apartments of the building, in the same home where their father was raised and grandmother resided in for the last 60 years of her life. The first of many of the Lovers & Friends series.
Credits
All imagery courtesy of Sophia Wilson and Izzy El Nems