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Montana Ray

@8planetsincancer

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Writer, translator, film photographer, NYU professor; mom of a teenager. ❤️‍🔥

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I am nurturing, but I carry a machete - Ijeoma Umebinyuo

📸: @8planetsincancer #film #35mm #analog

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hermano y yo 😛

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It’s been a little over a week since our 14th anniversary party, and we’re still completely on a high 🧡

Thank you for the laughter, the music, the hugs, the dancing, the familiar faces, and all the new ones who walked in and instantly felt like part of it.

What started as a store has grown into something so much bigger than we ever imagined, a true community. A place filled with connection, energy, and so much love.

Thank you to the amazing partners who were a part of the day and helped make it so special 🥹 @amritaone @maevechocolate @luluscoopbk @non.world🫶

Thank you to our neighbors @goldenrationyc for the amazing frozen cocktails 🍹 We’re so lucky to have you next door!

To all the incredible DJs who kept us grooving all day long: @ohs.fm @lnkx__ @jaxoncoles @virajkay 🎶

And lastly, thank you to @8planetsincancer and @carlos_delasancha for capturing the Su’juk familia so beautifully 🥹 These photos are beyond words 🙏

We’re still feeling it. Still grateful. Still smiling.
Here’s a little look back at the magic ✨
Love Su

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Su’juk Photoplay celebrating their 14th anniversary on the block. I’ve been talking and playing dress-up w Su for 14 years, and I hope we never stop!

For this studio pop-up I studied @oluremi.onabanjo ‘s Ideas of Africa. Published to accompany her phenomenal exhibition at MoMA, the book includes iconic images of family/party/fashion studio and commercial photographers like Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé.

While we are far less elegant, wrangling families (and so many bbs!!) with my 📸🎞️compadre @carlos_delasancha was complete chaos and so much fun.

Happy Anniversary, Su!! Love you, Gemma! Thank you! 🌹🧿❤️‍🔥

#film #35mm #120mm developed @photolifebrooklyn 🫶🏻

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slowed down, at peace & happy.🧿

July (and my birthday month) has been so good and special to me. These are the summers I dream about and honestly felt like older nyc summers before life changed so much for all of us. I’ve been searching for my calm again and finding ways to prioritize myself and my nervous system all while in juxtaposition getting busier than ever with my career on my own terms this time and realizing the alignment lays in preparing to make space to hold all that I’m calling in.

Living life very intentionally works like this: you start to do it, and the longer you do it the more unaligned things fall away and aligned things become just a natural part of your reality and element.

Life has felt that way lately. I’m a very homebody type person but we have been outside in community all summer and I feel like I can breathe around the people I’m surrounding myself with. When I’m working it feels like joy not empty tasks.

anyways so so much gratitude. 🙏

If you’re looking to reset and find some alignment again I’ll be offering my creative mapping summer workshop between 8/19- mid October. We will be trying to find balance again offline, through artistic and nervous system enriched patterns all whilst mapping out our careers that work for us. I’ll share everything I dreamed up and did that got me here just in a few years (but one very strong summer of strict routine last summer and moving back to a city that aligned with me pushed me back into my magic✨).

Comment Creative Map to receive link to join!

🌀I am offering two tiers!
Tier 1- One article a week with prompts and breakdowns to all paid @someplacetoheal subscribers (link in bio)

🌀Tier 2- 3 dates/ one hour workshops/replays + a year of comped substack subscription.

🌀We will be using the artists way book and I’ll be giving away one copy to one tier 2 member that joins by 8/10.

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GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING NEW YORK.

🚨 TODAY IS THE DAY 🚨

We are celebrating OHS’ FIRST BIRTHDAY and @sujukbrooklyn BEING ON THE BLOCK FOR 14 YEARS.

📍216 Greene Ave
🕒 3–8PM
🎧 JEKOVA (@dzekova.denise) · Viraj Kapoor (@virajkapoor_music) · Jaxon James (@jaxoncoles) · LNKX (@lnkx__)

Cocktails by @goldenrationyc 🍸 Ice cream by @luluscoopbk 🍦 Photoplay with @8planetsincancer 📸 @amritaone pop-up ✨

Good tunes. Good people. Good vibes. No excuses. Pull up. 🧡

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✨PHOTOPLAY✨ with @8planetsincancer & @carlos_delasancha this Saturday at our anniversary party

A few slots still open 🔗 below 🧡

🌀PORTRAIT SESSIONS
4-7 PM
30 minutes・$40
Pre-booking required

🌀COMMUNITY HOUR
7-8 PM
Complimentary drop-in portraits
No reservation needed

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like god with his mirror, i use it
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📸: the brilliant @8planetsincancer 🖤

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You thought this would *only* be a reading… guess what?? It’s also a viewing. @8planetsincancer will be showing us some photos and you don’t want to miss it!

Montana Ray is an archival scholar and film photographer, and her current 35mm collaborative portraiture explores translating family photography. She also translates from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently the work of Brazilian artist Yhuri Cruz, and writes in several genres. Her first book of concrete poetry, (guns & butter), was described by Cathy Park Hong as a mix of “Apollinaire with Pam Grier.” Her nonfiction exploring family history and Southern bellehood in Brazil won a NYFA finalist award. Ray holds an MFA in poetry and translation and a PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University and is Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU, where she teaches writing, translation, and archival inquiry.

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*corrected address: 19 Washington Sq North*
Really honored and thrilled to read alongside Gregory @pardlo this Thursday, 7pm at 19 Washington Sq North, as part of the NYU Family Photography Symposium, organized by the fabulous Montana Ray (@8planetsincancer). The event is free and open to the community! Come through and bring a friend :)

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This upcoming talk will feature Dorothy Berry discussing her book “The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities.” Her work considers how family materials are shaped when they enter institutional archives, raising important questions about access, representation, and care. The conversation will also explore how meaning and joy can be sustained within archival collections, particularly through family photographs.

April 23 | 5:00 - 6:00 PM
19 Washington Square North

🔗 Click the link in our bio to sign up.

Dorothy Berry, Archivist and Writer

In conversation with
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Documentary Photographer, Writer and Curator; Professor of Photography, Rutgers University–Newark

Organized by
Gregory Pardlo, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing and 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellow, NYUAD
Montana Ray, Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, NYU; 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellow, NYUAD

In collaboration with
19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellows Program

#Archives #BlackArchives #ArchivalPractice #PublicHistory #CulturalMemory #LibraryScience #DocumentingHistory #ArchivalResearch #HistoryMatters #VisualCulture #UpcomingEvent #NYCtalks #NYCEvent #NYUAD #19WSN #NYUEvents #NYUADInstitute

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As 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellows, Professors Gregory Pardlo and Montana Ray are exploring how family photography collections shape our understanding of memory, intimacy, and representation. Drawing on the Akkasah archive at NYU Abu Dhabi, their project examines themes of family, absence, and affection across photographic collections from the Middle East and North Africa.

Through collaboration with NYUAD archivists, their work will culminate in an artist book combining Pardlo’s poetry and Ray’s photography, experimenting with how meaning can be translated across text and image.

🔗 Click the link in our bio to learn more about our Faculty Fellows program.

Gregory Pardlo, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing and 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellow, NYUAD
Montana Ray, Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, NYU; 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellow, NYUAD

#VisualCulture #PhotographyArchive #FamilyHistory #ArtAndLiterature #ResearchSpotlight #HumanitiesInNYC #19WSNFF #19WSNFacultyFellows #NYUAD #19WSN

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