Cell Project Space

Join curator and musician Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura for a screening of selected shorts from Photodirect, the acclaimed YouTube series by artist Alex Harsley (b. 1932, USA).

 

Selected by LA Timpa, the Photodirect series is a compelling collection of film and video shorts, ranging from diaristic fragments and collage-like edits to grainy glimpses of downtown New York and its Black communities across decades. Seamlessly moving between everyday life, after-school projects, and scenes of artists working, performing, and gathering including; Vincent Smith, David Hammons, Candida Alvarez, and Andres Serrano; these works offer a textured, often unfiltered portrait of people and environments that might otherwise go undocumented.

 

Moving away from everyday reality, Harsley began producing a more fragmented and experimental body of work, culminating in First Light (2000–2020), later compiled into a feature-length film. Harsley describes these studies as depictions of the cosmos, an altered reality and an exploration of the origins of time as image, where form gradually disintegrates into an expressionistic field of material matter. This ambitious project emerged over two decades of shooting, layering, dissolving, and collaging images. Complex montages of flickering visuals and lo-fi early computer graphics are paired with Harsley’s musical scores. Each sequence pulses like a kaleidoscope, folding in on itself to generate vivid, shifting imagery, resulting in a richly psychedelic cinematic experience.

 

Photodirect illuminates Harsley’s 60-year career as a photojournalist and his contributions to the community of hundreds of Black and migrant artists in his neighbourhood, including founding and running the East Village’s artist-run 4th St Gallery and Minority Photographers, Inc. Since 1956, Harsley has captured Black political leaders, musicians, everyday life in Harlem, and countless cityscapes, amassing thousands of images.  continues this legacy, presenting a compelling visual record of a city and its people through Harsley’s unapologetic lens.

 

Drawing inspiration and resonances from this series, artist LA Timpa has invited Harsley to produce a video work for a track on his forthcoming 2026 album. The track and accompanied video work will premiere during the final stage of the event, as part of his solo exhibition, Come Back.