A Photo Series by Yolanda Hoskey
About Trendsetters
I grew up in Louis H Pink Houses projects in the 90s. Home of dilapidated buildings, street fights, elevators carpeted with urine, dreams deferred, and people who look like me beaten down by their environment, 28 years later, and not much has changed. I see those same people hanging around project hallways, the subjects of RIP posters, in jail, or simply surviving their circumstances. This is the ghetto, and you dare not fight what is already predetermined: you will be here for the rest of your life, for the ghetto is not designed to foster growth.
Everyone loves the ghetto aesthetic, but no one cares about the ghetto community.
We’ve seen it time and time again, major fashion brands mimicking or flat out stealing trends derived from these poor communities and marketing it off and “new and hip” ideas. We’ve seen retailers upsell basic items like bamboo earrings for triple their value because when placed on a body that is not black, the value increases. These entities capitalize on the essence of these communities yet pour nothing into the development of them.
Coming from an environment like this where you understand that you will receive no help, you feel helpless. You feel as though where you are is where you will remain. There is no light at the end of the tunnel because your tunnel is the ghetto. I am a product of this community and an advocate for its experience.
Trendsetters is a photo series encapsulating the quintessence of the African American ghetto experience through portraiture. The series will be shot over the course of 6 months in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. The photos will be curated into a monograph to be showcased in each featured city.
This project is an expression of appreciation and my declaration of care. Through my art, I hope to humanize and highlight an otherwise forgotten community while changing the narrative of what it means to be “ghetto.”
About the Artist
Yolanda Hoskey’s photography is an unapologetic ode to melanin. In this storytelling climate calling for change, she fights the system by creating flawless images of black art that she adorns as ‘a little creativity mixed with a little ghetto’.
An East New York native, she uses her inbred New York swag to shake the room, challenging traditional social norms and putting use to the phrase “young, gifted, and black.”
A graduate of the City College of New York, Yolanda holds a BA in Theater. She now spends her post-graduate years producing content, creative directing, and of course, creating beautiful images, proof that artistic development is anything but linear.
www.instagram.com/ghettoyolie/
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