Hidden Blocks: Newburgh
Hidden Blocks is a film investigating the fully and partially demolished city streets of the East Newburgh project during the Urban Renewal period of the 1960s and ’70s. This destruction leveled 1,300 buildings and displaced over 800 families. The knowledge of these streets and the histories of communities that lived there have also been hidden without acknowledgment that these empty lots and repurposed sites were once the homes and businesses of underserved and overlooked groups. Utilizing historical documentation, archived images, and modern stills and video, this work functions as a reminder of the broken promises made by the local and state government to these communities, showing what these spaces have been used for since Urban Renewal and give a sense of physical space to their history.
This film was made in partnership with the Newburgh Community Photography Project's "Truth Be Told" fellowship. Over the span of three years (2021-2023), the NCPP collective will continue to research, investigate, and photograph Black history in the City of Newburgh. “Truth Be Told: Uncovering Newburgh’s Muted Legacy” will combine portraits, landscapes, interiors, still lives, historical/vernacular photographs, and personal mementos in an attempt to reconsider the narrative of Newburgh’s history. NCPP is funded in part by the Leonian Foundation, the Aftermath Project, Goldschmidt Foundation, and Mary Cianni.