This is an ongoing project made in the Peninsula of New York City. If you get off at the Howard/JFK Airport stop on the A train—which almost no one does, as they are usually going to or from the airport—head south, walk down a tiny man-made pathway pressed up along a canal and train track, suddenly, your feet will reach the wetlands. You’ll face a house on stilts with a deck. A small fishing boat, ducks, maybe a heron, and an old lady feeding them stale bread. It feels like an abandoned New England fishing town, yet it is the first step into NYC.
Today, the city has lost most of its protective sand dunes and close to 80% of the coastal marshlands it had historically. Without these natural barriers, residents in the Jamaica Bay area are far more vulnerable to rising waters. This area raises profound questions about how people live and interact with the land, especially under the looming threat of climate change. Coastal storms and rising sea levels pose a risk that this community might be the last generation living on the fringes of New York City.
This project mixes portraits and landscapes. I aim for it to sit somewhere between reality and fiction, depicting the people and the place in a truthful and dignified way, while injecting a personal vision that evokes a sense of vulnerability, tension, and impending doom.
—Aurelien Bayo, a winner of the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2024. Discover all 25 Emerging Talents here.
