Alfredo Jimagua's exhibit "Seeds of Revolution" is on display now at Word Up Community Bookshop in Washington Heights. The exhibition features Jimagua's portraits of working-class New Yorkers in the wake of Zohran Mamdani's win in last year's mayoral election.
"I've always been interested in making known the things that people take for granted, or that people live with every day," said Jimagua, a photographer, graphic novelist, and community organizer living in Sunnyside, Queens. "I had an extremely humble background to say the least, and so I think I have a knack for finding the beauty in places where people don't necessarily find it."Jimagua grew up between Moca in the Dominican Republic, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, which "when I was growing up," Jimagua said, "was the poorest city in the state."
Jimagua moved to New York a decade and a half ago, after graduating from Emerson College, but only started community organizing in the last six years or so. "I think, like most people, the pandemic really did it, and then it kind of stuck," Jimagua said. He's the vice president of the nonprofit Pact Collective, a fiscal sponsor for movement organizations, and also works with the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
"I've been recently over the last two years or so trying to find a way to fuse my organizing principles and my organizing community with photography," Jimagua told me. Around the same time, he began perfecting his portraiture, with which he says he aims to "get images of people that seem like a camera is not in the room."
The opening reception for "Seeds of Revolution" is Thursday at Word Up. I asked Jimagua for his other recommendations for things to do in the next two weeks, particularly in his neighborhood in Sunnyside. "Every three years or so, the New York Times writes something about Sunnyside being the best hidden gem," he replied, hesitating, "and I'm always kind of afraid of more people moving in." Nevertheless, here are Jimagua's plugs: