Between January 1978 and April 1979, Nooney networked her way through Brooklyn documenting residences and their occupants, asking each for a referral to another willing subject. The Dinanda Nooney Brooklyn photographs collection depicts over 150 families or individuals and is organized chronologically. Each photograph is identified by neighborhood, address, and the names of the sitters. Among those neighborhoods depicted are Bay Ridge, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Carroll Gardens, Coney Island, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Fort Greene, Gravesend, Greenpoint, and Park Slope. In addition to the photographs, Nooney kept index cards to which she affixed contact prints and took notes recording her observations of each family. The collection includes copies of these notes.
Ownership: The Nooney Brooklyn Photographs Gift of Dinanda H. Nooney, 1995
Biographical/historical: Documentary photographer Dinanda H. Nooney was involved with two extensive projects to document areas of New York City during the 1970s. Born in Manhattan, Nooney's first photographic project (1974-1976) was to document the entire length of the West Side Highway, which had partially collapsed in 1973 and was demolished beginning in 1977. Her second project, the documentation of Brooklyn, was much larger in scope. Nooney initially became interested in the borough in 1976, while working as a volunteer for George McGovern's presidential campaign. Two years later, she used the connections she had made in order to gain access to rooftops and other vantage points for a survey of the borough. She soon became more interested in the people she met and began photographing families in their homes. Many of these sitters then recommended other potentially willing subjects. Working almost daily from January 1978 to April 1979, she crisscrossed the borough, documenting the broad ethnic and economic range of Brooklyn's residents. This project was the subject of an exhibition, At Home in Brooklyn, held at the Long Island Historical Society in 1985.
Physical Description
Extent: 576 photographic prints : gelatin silver, b&w 20.3 x 25.4 cm
