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Our best photos of 2019

2019: Year in Review

December 24, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
Javon and Kaywonda Banks embrace at the Otisville Correctional Facility, where Javon is incarcerated for a murder he committed at 15. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
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A lot happened in Brooklyn this year — from environmental policies to infrastructure changes to housing reform. We’ve wrapped up the key pieces for you in “2019: Year in Review.” 

As we try every day to tell the stories of Brooklyn, the imagery plays a crucial role. Photography — of the big, public events and the small, personal moments — is central to enhancing our reporting. Now, with 2020 fast approaching, the Brooklyn Eagle has put together a list of our favorite photographs from this year. 

Some of these photos tell the story of this year’s biggest headlines. The city moved forward with its plan to close the violence-plagued Rikers Island. An energized movement of tenant activism ended in sweeping rent reform in Albany. Students marched in support of government action on the climate crisis. Communities grappled with the effects of gutting gun violence in the borough.

Some of them, though, tell the smaller stories of what makes Brooklyn — at the risk of being 100 percent cliché — Brooklyn. Students studying fashion through the Brooklyn Public Library put on a runway show honoring the Herero women of Namibia and their Victorian-style dresses. Emerging musicians at NYCHA’s Tompkins Houses hosted a concert on a revamped basketball court. Brooklynites came out in nipple pasties galore to the borough’s weirdest — and one of its most beloved — events of the year: the Mermaid Parade.

These are our favorite photos from the past 12 months, shown chronologically so that you can watch the year in replay through the lenses of our talented photographers. — Sara Bosworth


January

Kate Murray attended the march on the Upper West Side, but called the division of the marches “disappointing.”
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Despite the controversy and fragmentation that marked the Women’s March movement this year, thousands of women took to the streets in New York City on Jan. 21 with a message that was supported across the board: stand up for gender and minority rights. Kate Murray, who attended the Women’s March Alliance march on the Upper West Side, called the division of the marches “disappointing.”

February

Photo: Todd Maisel/Brooklyn Eagle

A frigid week without heat or electricity inside Sunset Park’s huge Metropolitan Detention Center drew hundreds of detainees’ loved ones, activists and local leaders. The protesters outside condemned the “inhumane” conditions inside the federal facility, which houses 1,600 inmates and pretrial detainees.

March

People of various faiths met outside Makki Majid in Ditmas Park to show solidarity with their Muslim neighbors. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

After a white supremacist killed 50 people inside two New Zealand mosques, congregants of Makki Masjid in Ditmas Park left their congregational prayer that Friday to a crowd of people of all faiths waiting outside in solidarity.

Protesters and counter-protesters faced off outside Councilmember Yeger’s Borough Park office Thursday evening. Eagle photo by Noah Goldberg.
Protesters and counter-protesters faced off outside Councilmember Yeger’s Borough Park office Thursday evening. Photo: Noah Goldberg/Brooklyn Eagle

After Councilmember Kalman Yeger tweeted that “Palestine does not exist,” about 20 protesters gathered outside his Borough Park office to call for his resignation. They were met by approximately 200 supporters.

April

A Crown Heights tenant at an April protest. Eagle file photo by Paul Frangipane
A Crown Heights tenant at an April protest. Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Tenants across the city fought for improvements to their homes this year. In April tenants of Joseph Popack — who owns 46 buildings in Crown Heights, Brownsville, Flatbush and East Flatbush — pushed for a response from their building manager roughly two months after they delivered a 150-signature petition requesting a meeting.

Hundreds of Brooklynites packed the Plymouth Church on Wednesday for a town hall centering on the BQE rehab plan. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

A blockbuster crowd packed a church in Brooklyn Heights to hear proposals for the replacement of a crumbling 1.5-mile section of the BQE. Every one of historic Plymouth Church’s 1,000 seats was filled, and additional attendees were crowded four deep at the back.

Family, friends and neighbors of Saheed Vassell took to the streets in Crown Heights on Thursday to march in remembrance on the anniversary of Vassell's death. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Family, friends and neighbors of Saheed Vassell, who was shot and killed by police officers in 2018, took to the streets in Crown Heights in remembrance of his death. “The first thing the NYPD did was blame him for his own death,” said Lorna Vassell, Saheed’s mother.

May

Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Students of BKLYN Fashion Academy, ranging in age from 17 to over 60, paid homage to the Herero women of Namibia and their Victorian-style dresses, incorporating wearable technology into their designs in a meld of past and future, in a runway show at Brooklyn Public Library.

The oldest structure in Jonathan Lopes’s exhibit is the Manhattan Bridge. He created it in 2011. Eagle photos by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Jonathan Lopes kicked off his first solo LEGO art exhibition at Downtown Brooklyn’s City Point. The show was comprised of about 30 New York structures like the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, City Hall and Grand Central Terminal. The oldest structure was this one, the Manhattan Bridge. He created it in 2011.

June

Sherry Roberson prepares to boil a pot of water on the hot plate NYCHA provided for her. She cooks for a four-person family. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Sherry Roberson prepares to boil a pot of water on the hot plate NYCHA provided for her. She cooks for a four-person family. Roughly 60 families in the Red Hook Houses had their gas turned off on Feb. 13, and demanded reimbursements from the city.

Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

This year’s Mermaid Parade saw hundreds of thousands of people descend upon Coney Island for the annual event, an eccentric celebration of art and summer.

A crowd of parents bringing their children to Drag Queen Story Hour at a Crown Heights library faced a small group of protestors in the second (and smaller) demonstration against the event.
Photo: Meaghan McGoldrick/Brooklyn Eagle

A library-sponsored Drag Queen story hour sparked protests in both Gerritsen Beach and Crown Heights.

July

Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

The 43rd annual Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks returned to south of the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time since 2014, with more than 70,000 shells from four barges and 100 spots on the bridge itself.

September

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams asked everyone in the crowd who had lost a family member to gun violence to raise their hand. Photo: Mark Davis/Brooklyn Eagle

At a vigil for victims of three mass shootings — in Brownsville, El Paso and Dayton — Public Advocate Jumaane Williams asked the crowd to raise their hands if they had lost someone to gun violence.

Najaee Scott performs her song, “Money Bag,” at the From Blocks to Beats graduation. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Najaee Scott performs at the graduation ceremony for From Blocks to Beats, a program at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Houses that teaches young people about producing and performing music.

Photo: Mark Davis/Brooklyn Eagle

Kids across the city went back to school, and the Brooklyn Eagle asked them what they were looking forward to most in the coming year. Sandra, age 5, said, “I’m going to be nice to everybody and make a lot of friends.”

Candles illuminate Sheepshead Bay’s 9/11 memorial mural on the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Eagle photo by Mark Davis
Photo: Mark Davis/Brooklyn Eagle

An estimated 150 people gathered by a Sheepshead Bay mural on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to honor its victims and heroes with a candle-light vigil. The organizers vow to keep the yearly vigils going. “As long as I’m breathing and alive, there will be a memorial,” one said.

Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

The City Council held a public hearing on the plan to close Rikers Island and build four new borough-based jails. The plan ended up passing. Pictured here: a member of advocacy group Just Leadership USA.

Students march over the Brooklyn Bridge while making their voices heard.
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn students came out thousands strong to demand action against the climate crisis as part of a global strike on Friday that filled New York’s streets with the voices of the city’s youth.

A man makes his way dancing down Eastern Parkway at the West Indian Day Parade.
Photo: Mark Davis/Brooklyn Eagle

A man makes his way dancing down Eastern Parkway at the West Indian Day Parade. The parade, and the preceding J’Ouvert celebration, turned Crown Heights into a massive celebration of Caribbean culture on Labor Day weekend.

October

Javon and Kaywonda Banks embrace at the Otisville Correctional Facility, where Javon is incarcerated for a murder he committed at 15. Eagle photo by Paul Frangipane
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

Javon and Kaywonda Banks embrace at the Otisville Correctional Facility, where Javon is incarcerated for a murder he committed at 16. Kaywonda’s visits to her husband are made more complicated by the fact that New York state does not provide transportation from cities to prisons, meaning she has to find her own way.

November

Maria Marin, a tamale vendor, yells to police of the 33rd Transit District.
Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

After a woman selling churros was arrested at the Broadway Junction station, advocates demanded the city curb what they describe as overly zealous policing of the subway system — starting with the way it deals with vendor permits. Here, Maria Marin, a tamale vendor, yells at police of the 33rd Transit District.

December

Mourners gather on Rodney Street in Williamsburg for the funeral of Moshe Deutsch. Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle

More than 1,000 mourners streamed onto a Williamsburg street to pay their final respects to two of the civilian victims of the Jersey City shooting. The crowd carried the bodies of the dead through the street.





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