When you hear New York City, Rockaway is not one of the places part of the city that comes to your mind. However, when you take the A train all the way down, end of Queens, you will come to a place where the environment means a lot to the people.
The first time I visited the Rockaway, it felt like a place that you would see when you get off one of the NYC subway stops. It feels like a place that shouldn't be part of NYC but recognized as its own. People from very different backgrounds call this place their home. While it is a few stops away from Manhattan it exists in it has its timeline and different rules and people’s way of engaging with each other.
Living in very close proximity, people from different religions, nationalities, cultures, and ethnicity create an environment where you can feel the culture change just going from one house next to the other. While people are trying to go on with their lives, the way they shape their environment reflects on people understanding of themselves and the people around them.
With this project, my objective is to capture how people’s environment has an important impact on how people live and adapt to it in a way you can’t recreate that makes the Rockaway special. If you walk from one end of the island to the other, you will see how people try to overcome their differences and coexist in an environment of the clash between nature and man.
That is why the Rockaway community chooses to live in this special place. The Rockaway is a place where people are willing to accept the struggles of its nature while cherishing the surroundings caused by the differences of its people.
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