It’s week 2 of Fujifilm’s Fujikina NYC 2022 takeover of our Photo of the Day and Week series, where the spotlight gets placed on five of their featured creators speaking at Fujikina NYC 2022 on September 10. Each photographer has been making images with Fujifilm’s latest X Series cameras. This week’s featured artist: Photographer Yolanda Hoskey.

Hoskey describes her work as 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—a nod to the community she was raised in. 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, Hoskey holds a B.A in Theatre. She now spends her post-graduate years, creative producing, sculpting narratives, and of course creating beautiful images, proof that artistic development is anything but linear. She wears her authenticity on her sleeves. What you see is what you get. A reminder to us all to live as unapologetically as possible.

Recently invited to contribute to Fujikina NYC 2022, Hoskey’s portrait project—Trendsetters—examines the contradictions of “ghetto aesthetic” versus the ghetto community, taking an alternative view that seeks to humanize a forgotten community. The project was done over the course of two weeks in NYC and will be curated into a photo book. Here’s a look at 5 of our favorite images in the series:

“This series encapsulates the quintessence of the African American ghetto experience through portraiture,” says Hoskey. “It is an alternative view of the other side of this narrative, the beauty forged through pain.”

“I grew up in the Louis H Pink Houses projects in NYC in the 90s,” she continues. “Home of dilapidated buildings, street fights, elevators carpeted with urine, dreams deferred, and people who look like me beaten down by their environment: 29 years later and not much has changed…”

Hoskey continues: “Coming from an environment like this where you understand that you will receive no help, you feel helpless. You feel as though you are 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 the community and an advocate of its experience.”

This project, Hoskey sums up, 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.”

Photographer Yolanda Hoskey:
Instagram: @ghettoyolie
Website: yolandahoskey.art

Fujikina NYC 2022 is free and open to the public. Guests are required to register and book a time slot to attend the event, as well as reserve space in a workshop, photo walk or touch and try session they wish to attend. To learn more, visit the event site here.

Dig into our Photo of the Day archives for even more eye-catching portraits and photos with unique and cool photo techniques. Submit your wedding portraits, editorial, documentary and commercial image submissions here:  [email protected]