We asked shoppers in this popular Russian-language bookstore to share their American Dream with us by writing or drawing it with a magic marker on a "thought bubble". Why did we use a bookstore? During the Iron Curtain era books and films played a very important role in the shaping of an image of the West. During the project, almost every participant shared his or her immigration story with us. We chose some of those stories to accompany the photos. This event was photographed.

This project is a part of Casual Conversations in Brooklyn.

Casual Conversations in Brooklyn explores and documents the experience of immigration in America. This project takes up the issues of assimilation, alienation, and the diasporic elements of American society by focusing on one community, the third wave of Russian-Jewish immigrants that arrived to the United States between the 1970s and 1990s.

The project is based on a series of public dialogues, interactions, and conversations staged in the Brighton Beach community in Brooklyn. By bringing contemporary art out of the gallery and into the community, we create a kind of art/research laboratory in the public realm. Casual Conversations looks at the conflicting desires of this still nascent community: How does one retain cultural roots while simultaneously creating a new identity?

Confronted with radically different experiences, these Americans search for new identities that match their new lives. Every staged conversation aims to provoke its participants to react and to reflect. Every event targets some issue - whether personal or communal - and attempts to elicit a reaction that will eventually become a brushstroke in this community portrait.

photo credit: Anton Trofymov

Casual Conversations in Brooklyn is supported by the Six Points Fellowship and the Puffin Foundation.

American Dream photographs / view >>>

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