Artists for immigrant rights: Photographers to share and sell their work on Sunday to raise money for vulnerable communities
Organizers say the exhibit is part show, part community gathering, and part act of solidarity.
Katie Tackman’s photography often centers on vintage cars — and not on typical images of gleaming tail fins and shining chrome, but on older, rustier models that still roam the city streets.
This weekend she’ll turn her interest and talent toward helping vulnerable immigrant communities in the Philadelphia area, joining other photographers to raise money at the Artists for Immigrant Rights Photo Sale and Exhibition.
Organizers say it’s part show, part community gathering, part act of solidarity, an event that unites people who believe that art can protect and strengthen.
Some of the photographers who’ll take part concentrate on social-justice issues. Others focus on birds, landscapes, or architecture.
When she was growing up in Connecticut, Tackman said, her father raced cars as a hobby, and that may have ignited her passion for the subject. Her interest in immigrant rights goes back to about 2016, when she helped curate a show called “Love Thy Neighbor” at the Gravy Studio & Gallery in Northern Liberties, which examined refugee life in South Philadelphia.
“We are a sanctuary city,” said Tackman, who helped found Artists for Immigrant Rights, and “we need to support our immigrant neighbors. … I feel like art and photography is such a good way to get people interested in the topic.”
People who go to the free show can meet and buy from acclaimed local photographers, with proceeds going to help immigration organizations via the Bread & Roses Community Fund. The photographers donate their work, time, and costs.
About 20 photographers will be stationed at individual tables, showing their pictures and answering questions about how and why they do what they do. Photos are priced at an intentionally affordable $20 to $200.
The event takes place from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Fleisher Art Memorial in South Philadelphia.
In the past year, Artists for Immigrant Rights and Bread & Roses have raised more than $100,000 for grassroots organizations in the region. The money goes to support legal aid, organizing efforts, emergency assistance, and frontline defense for immigrant families.
The goal on Sunday, said David Acosta, one of the organizers, is of course to sell as many pictures as possible. Those sales and matching grants are what brings in money. Bread & Roses then makes distributions to groups like VietLead, the Vietnamese-led organization, and Juntos, the Latino advocacy group based in South Philadelphia.
A photograph purchased at the show becomes more than art on a wall, Acosta said. It becomes advocacy, or emergency support, or legal representation.
“People can get really, really wonderful photographs by some prominent Philadelphia photographers at a low cost,” he said, “and help fund some of the work that’s going on in immigrant communities.”
The impetus for Artists for Immigrant Rights, he said, was the shock over the Trump administration’s move into major American cities, some of which faced a surge of federal troops and immigration agents under the banner of increased public safety.
Acosta, the artistic director at Casa de Duende in Center City, said the works available on Sunday come from the photographers’ private portfolios.
“It’s a small thing I can do to try to raise money and try to help out,” said Rodney Atienza, the photographer son of Filipino immigrants, who’ll take part on Sunday.
His work documents social-justice movements, including issues of mental health, poverty, disability and the old and sick. Recently he photographed Chinatown’s struggle against the Sixers’ plan to build a new arena on the edge of the neighborhood.
Atienza was first inspired to consider those causes years ago, at James Madison University, during a class on protest and social movements during the 1960s. He later worked at Project Home in Philadelphia, where the walls displayed photographs shot by iconic local photographer Harvey Finkle.
Finkle ― who also will be at the show on Sunday ― became a friend and mentor.
And Finkle helped found Artists for Immigrant Rights.
The organization emerged as photographers noticed the strain that Trump immigration policies were causing for local advocacy organizations, Finkle said in an interview.
“All the stuff that ICE was doing, perpetuating on the immigrant community, the horror of it all,” Finkle said, “we felt we needed to try to raise some money for groups doing the work.”
