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In 2015, Justin Dusett and Steve Carter began an experiment to view Rochester from various perspectives.
Each week, they had a different photographer take over their Instagram account, Explore Rochester, to share the city through their lens. The project is still going strong, 531 weeks later.
That longevity will be on full display today as “Explore Rochester @ 10: A Decade of People and Places,” opens in the main gallery of Rochester Contemporary Art Center as part of its First Friday event, Rochester’s citywide gallery night.
The exhibit will have a selection of over 500 photos curated to show Rochester’s evolving identity across the past decade with diverse and intimate images. Given the project’s length, styles and subject matter vary wildly from artist to artist.
For example, Shelby Zink, a contributor from year one of the project, chose to highlight important and impactful spaces to her, including the Frederick Douglass Resource Center and the Islamic Center of Rochester. Sara Remington, a recently featured photographer, chose a more abstract way of showing her perspective, with photos of eggshells or leaves in a pond.
While there is much variation in the photos, the throughline for the account is always about connection.
“Explore Rochester exists to connect people to people and people to place,” the organizers say. “While social media served as the tool for the past decade of this shared archive, it was never the end game. It’s simply a place where every voice could share at the same volume.”
“As a first-year contributor, the patterns of familiar spaces, places, and activities highlighted over the past ten years of Explore Rochester reveal to me that we are far more alike than different,” adds Zink. “While each of the hundreds of contributors sheds light on a unique slice of the city, it is the common thread of our shared love for this community and the place we call home that draws me back time and time again.”
RoCo, which helps organize First Friday to highlight small art spaces, galleries, and studios, is also happy to help further make those connections. It will host a panel discussion on the exhibit on April 4.
“At RoCo, we believe in the power of art to reflect and shape our community,” said Bleu Cease, executive director. “‘Explore Rochester @ 10’ not only showcases the incredible photographic skill of our regional artists but also highlights the shared experiences that bring us together and help define our collective sense of place. All of us at RoCo are proud to host this exhibition and celebrate a decade of community storytelling.”
“Explore Rochester @10: A Decade of People and Places” is one of four exhibitions opening at RoCo on First Friday. The other three are:
■ “We Done It” by local artist Steven Peet. Peet drew on his background as an architect and his experiences abroad to interrogate the tension between abundance and efficiency in contemporary urban spaces in a series of paintings.
■ “Embodied: Art and Technology in Dialogue” by Slinko, Stephanie Sutton, and Zorica Čolić. The exhibit is a continuation of RoCo’s annual collaboration with the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University. It brings together recent video, multimedia, and performance artworks and is curated by Myles Calvert, director of IEA. A virtual panel discussion will be held on March 20.
■ “A Roc Moment”, by photographer Renée Veniskey. Marking the fifth anniversary of the life-altering COVID-19 pandemic, Veniskey’s works recall drive-by birthday parties, grandmas waving through a window, and families cuddling close with their pets and one another on front porches.
Opening events for all four exhibits is March 7 from 6 to 9 p.m. Admission is free for RoCo members and $2 for nonmembers. “A Roc Moment” will be installed in Roco’s Upstairs Gallery, run through March 28, and be open to the public only on Fridays, 12 to 5 p.m. All other exhibits will be on display through May 10.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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