Meeting at Newtown Creek, Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT, June 5-30
Meeting at Newtown Creek is a series of diptych photographs tracing Newtown Creek, the overlooked waterway that creates the border between Brooklyn and Queens, NY. Part of the Hudson River Estuary, Newtown Creek is linked to the currents that shaped me, growing up in Nyack, NY. I’ve oriented my life through connections to water, and in moving to Brooklyn, walks along the creek shores have immersed me in my community and local history through environmental activism. Connecting with Newtown Creek Alliance, I seek a holistic understanding of the estuary’s environmental history and contemporary restoration efforts.
Newtown Creek has endured centuries of toxic waste, oil spills, and salty runoff, destroying the fragile brackish ecosystem, and leading to its Superfund Site status as of 2009. As Newtown Creek Alliance works to revitalize the estuary’s murky waters, educate community members on the water’s history, and construct access points and parks along the creek’s shores, my diptychs illustrate an uncertain future for Newtown Creek. Toxic industrial dumping continues, supported by the U.S. government’s attempts to hack apart the Clean Water Act, enacted in 1972, leaving marshlands and streams especially vulnerable. One could imagine Newtown Creek as clear and vital like the Connecticut River that passes through Brattleboro, but radical federal and industrial shifts would need to happen, and quickly.
The Connecticut River is an inspiring example of revitalization. Called “America’s best landscaped sewer” in the 1950s, the Connecticut River is now a vibrant ecological refuge and safe for swimming and fishing. This transformation was possible through decades of federal regulations, conservation efforts, and the work of groups like the Connecticut River Conservancy. Without this type of concerted effort, things will continue to get worse for Newtown Creek, especially as environmental protections fade. Newtown Creek’s story is important to tell today, as the creek represents all waterways in the United States, currently under threat from the proposed loosened restrictions around corporate toxic dumping through the dissolution of the Clean Water Act. Working with diptychs allows for these contradictory realities and opposing forces to coexist, illuminating our pivotal moment and unknown future.
July 2025, the Seine reopened for recreational swimming for the first time since 1923. Once a lively swimming site, the environmental effects of the Industrial Revolution (factory runoff, sewage leaks, boat traffic, car fumes…) made the river water unsafe for bathing. The official reopening follows the 2024 Olympic Games, in which more than $1.6 billion was invested in river cleanup. The City of Paris opened pools for lap swimming at Bercy, Bras de Grenelle, and Bras Marie. I took this photograph from the Bercy Bridge, on a walk with my French-American friend, Anis.
What’s Going On!, Extra Special with Cheese, Burlington, VT, November 22-December 21, 2025
“Object Image,” F-Stop Magazine February/March Issue, 2026
Stories in Blue, Thrd Space Studio, San Antonio, TX, 2026.
Of Land and Place, Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT, March 7-April 27, 2025.
“Knickerbocker Ice Festival A Celebration of 250,” two page spread with 11 color photographs, The Rockland County Times, February, 2026
Featured on The Curated Fridge
Riverside, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA, May 2023.
Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, Tiya Miles, WW Norton, 2023.
B-22, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge MA, May 2022
B22 is a studio space in the basement of the Harvard Carpenter Center where I created an installation with family photographs, found objects, paintings, drawings, and organic materials. I was interested in fostering new relationships between the materials I gathered and exploring how these connections allowed the past to be recontextualized and re-imagined through photography in the present.
Kitchen, Midwest Center for Photography, May 6-27, 2022.
The Harvard Advocate, Spring 2021.
Lucy Jackson 