About Us
Waste Side Story is a collaboration between photographer Robin Michals and dancer/choreographer Lynn Neuman. They met in 2018 during a Works on Water residency at Governor’s Island in New York harbor. The project moves through the infrastructure of plastic from its creation out of fossil fuels to its disposal, parodying both fashion photography and the trend in dance photography of ballerinas on city streets. Waste Side Story uses humor and poignancy to engage audiences to think about plastic as a process, a system of use, and a set of economic relationships.
Robin Michals
Robin Michals is a photographer whose work explores a range of environmental issues. Her most recent work, the series Our Neighborhood juxtaposes sites of residential life in cities and towns across the US with the infrastructure of the petrochemical industry. This work was most recently seen in a two-person show, Industrial Sights, with the Chicago-based photographer Matthew Kaplan, at the Marshall J. Gardener Center for the Arts in Gary, Indiana. Images from Our Neighborhood were also part of the 8th Edition of THE FENCE in 2019-2020, and in group shows at David Orton Gallery, the Texas Photographic Society, and in Newsweek Japan and F-Stop and Float magazines. The series was selected for Critical Mass Top 50 in 2019 and for the Tokyo International Photography Competition in 2020. She teaches photography at New York City College of Technology, City University of New York (CUNY) and lives in Brooklyn.
Since 2010, Michals has been developing Castles Made of Sand, a long-term documentation of the low-lying communities around New York City that are being impacted by sea level rise. Oakwood Beach records the slow dismantlement of a neighborhood in Staten Island, NY after it was hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. Images from these two series have been seen at St. Peter’s Church, the Alice Austen House, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, and the Davis Orton Gallery among other venues.
Michals has a long term commitment to the Brooklyn waterfront, creating the photographic series Abused and Reused: The Brooklyn Waterfront and being a founding member of the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center, an organization that encourages policy discussion around waterfront issues. She was an artist -in-residence at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2015. Her work was included in the exhibit Shifting Perspectives: Photographs of Brooklyn’s Waterfront at the Brooklyn Historical Society in 2017.
Lynn Neuman
Lynn Neuman, Director of Artichoke Dance Company, is a national leading eco-artist known for her multi-year program working with plastic bags that affected the passing of comprehensive plastic bag legislation in New York State. Her site-specific work has been commissioned by the Cooper Hewitt Museum, The Waterfront Alliance, The Soraya and Texas A&M. Stage commissions include the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Place, and the Joffrey Ballet School.
Lynn is an Association of Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow and is the only choreographer to be awarded a Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts. She has been featured in Dance Magazine, Broadway World, National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post for her innovative creations, as well as on Citizen’s Climate Radio, and the Climate Check podcast. Her works have been performed in the United States, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Turks and Caicos. Professional residencies include Ucross Foundation, Art Omi, Governor’s Island, and Chautauqua Institution.
Lynn has been a guest artist at universities and arts programs across the country. In the 19/20 academic year, she created the Dance and Sustainability Project with Rider University and Future Currents festival with California State University Northridge. She is sought for workshops and lectures in eco-arts activism, environmental justice, and engaging communities in environmental arts initiatives.
Lynn serves as a volunteer coastal cleanup coordinator and is on the steering committee of 350Brooklyn. She is a member of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice and is a regional organizer for Global Water Dances.