HAMILTON HEIGHTS DARKROOM

Lenore Browne 

Lenore Browne started using a film camera after graduating high school. Although she later received business-related degrees, her passion lies with film photography and printing in a traditional darkroom. In her first attempt to display her photographs, Browne’s “Life Lines” was selected in a juried competition for exhibition at the Pen and Brush Gallery, in Greenwich Village, by Daile Kaplan, Vice President and Director of Photographs of the Swann Galleries, May 2009. Thereafter, she began documenting Harlem as it evolves through its Second Renaissance. Browne’s Harlem photographs have exhibited at Hamilton Landmark Galleries, Symphony Space, Harlem Hospital, Columbia University’s Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion, Harlem Fine Arts Show, and the New York Public Library.

Browne is a founder and Board Member (President) of the Hamilton Heights Darkroom.

Rocco Candela-Michelus 
(b. 1999, New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY)

Rocco Candela-Michelus is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in New York City. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Arts and The City College of New York with a major in Studio Art. Presently, he still lives in New York and works across the mediums of painting and photography. He has been an active student at the Carnival since 2018.

Carlos Corona 
(b. 1984, New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY)

Carlos Corona is a self-taught photographer whose work focuses on black-and-white film street photography. Carlos began photographing in 2017 during recovery from a bicycle accident, when the long walks through New York City served as both rehabilitation and a new creative outlet. Influenced by the city’s energy, human interactions, and the fleeting moments of everyday life, Carlos’s work reflects a pursuit of the “decisive moment.” He works exclusively with film and develops and prints his own negatives by hand. As a multidisciplinary artist, Carlos’s background includes music, painting, and illustration, and he continues to expand his practice through hands-on disciplines, most recently through watchmaking. Carlos has been an active student at the Carnival since 2019, exclusively through Hamilton Heights Darkroom.

Jonathan Finlayson
(b. 1982, Berkeley, CA; lives and works in New York, NY)

Jonathan Finlayson is a professional musician, photographer and long-time resident of Harlem. I am a student of the Hamilton Heights Darkroom and I occasionally assist young adults associated with the Maysles Documentary Center with developing, editing and printing their work. I became active with the Arts Carnival in 2022.

Michael Macioce
(b. 1958, New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY)

Michael Macioce is a founder and the instructor at the Hamilton Heights Darkroom. Practicing photography from his East Village studio since 1982, he is known for combining fine art and documentary photography of the downtown music and art scenes.

A graduate of School of Visual Arts (1990), Michael’s teaching career began at the Parsons School of Design in 1994. He has taught photography at The New School, School of Visual Arts, and Educational Alliance before founding The Hamilton Heights Darkroom.

He has exhibited at many galleries in the US and Japan, has had work shown in the Jewish Museum of Paris, and was a featured photographer at the New York Photo Festival 2010 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, where he lectured on “Photographing Unseen New York.”

Tamara Wasserman

Tamara Wasserman has been taking black & white photographs and printing in a traditional darkroom for over 30 years. Tamara documents New York City day-to-day street life, as well as local and national political activities, and scenes of everyday life in various countries encountered during her travels. She has focused on photographing political protests and rallies in America for over 25 years.

Tamara is a co-founder and board member of the Hamilton Heights Darkroom. As a member of the Hamilton Heights Darkroom she has participated in the Harlem Arts Stroll for several years and also exhibited her work at the New School and at Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance's annual Women in the Heights exhibitions. Tamara studied photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the New School for Social Research, School of Visual Arts, and the Educational Alliance Art School.