Amy Wu hopes to showcase photographs, such as this one taken by Cheyenne Richardson, a student at East Side Community High School, on a new website that explores Queens. Richardson, and three others from her school, took photos on Austin Street in Forest Hills on a recent Saturday morning. The pupils are part of the Five Boroughs Foundation of Photography program, where Wu’s friend, Winnie Cheung, a film editor, director and photographer from Forest Hills volunteers. Photo by Cheyenne Richardson
Growing up in Richmond Hill and Flushing, Amy Wu has long been a proud resident of the borough that she said can often get the shaft by individuals who denounce it as a “suburb of Manhattan” – or an “outer borough that isn’t Brooklyn,” as she states on the Kickstarter website she launched last week to raise money for a project that aims to explore Queens through interviews, photos, and a resource directory.
Originally thought of for a graduate school course, Wu’s project – a website called Qnsmade – aims to explore the borough of 2.3 million people who speak at least 138 languages in 80 different neighborhoods.
The site, which currently lives at qnsmade.tumblr.com, will ultimately consist of three major parts: street portraits of Queens residents with some documented conversation, interviews with borough “artists, makers and doers,” and a resource page that Wu, now a Jamaica resident, hopes will help to connect residents with Queens-based vendors and manufacturers. In order to launch the full-fledged website, Wu began a major fundraising initiative last week through kickstarter, at https://www.kickstarter.com/
By Anna Gustafson
