Meet Isabelle Ginsberg, the 17-year-old Brooklyn teen who photographed Prospect Park for a year and turned nearly 30 framed prints into a cancer fundraiser
For over a year, Isabelle Ginsberg, 17, photographed the same park. Every Saturday, and most Sundays, she wandered through Prospect Park. The Brooklyn teen captured the park in summer, then winter and spring. She walked along the same paths, capturing different angles and emotions. This attention to detail wasn’t just about composition, light or nailing the perfect angle. As a photographer, she cared deeply about all those things, but this time, the weight she’d placed on each frame was greater. She wanted the photographs to tell a story and, eventually, to do some good.After careful curation, Isabelle Ginsberg’s photographs were framed and displayed on gallery walls at a community print sale. People could take a piece of Prospect Park home with them, but the money they spent was meant for something bigger. The proceeds were donated to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to support cancer research and patient care, a cause that was deeply personal to Ginsberg and her family. She knew what that meant. In 2020, when her father was diagnosed with brain cancer, she experienced her whole world crumbling. She knew what help meant at that point. So, she wanted to pay it forward.This is the story of how a Brooklyn teenager turned her eye for the world into a fundraiser for cancer research.
Turning passion into purpose
Pic credit: Brooklyn Paper/ Lauren Walsh, Isabelle Ginsberg
It started simply enough: weekend walks with her mother through the sprawling green space, camera in hand. Trees, wildlife, joggers, quiet corners. The kind of work a teenager might keep to themselves, posted to Instagram and filed away. “I just started taking photos for fun,” Ginsberg told Brooklyn Paper. But then it transformed into something else. She thought about her dad, who is now in remission, after being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2020. “And because my dad had cancer, we just had the idea to have a fundraiser. I felt that we should try to raise money for cancer research because it’s a cause really important to me,” she told the outlet. By September, a year’s worth of Prospect Park moments had become 30 framed prints and a community event. Nearly all of them sold.
A mother’s eyes and daughter’s lens
Pic credit: Brooklyn Paper/ Lauren Walsh, Isabelle Ginsberg
Lauren Walsh, Isabelle’s mother, has spent years working in photography and exhibition curation. She noticed her daughter’s eye for composition and light. She encouraged Isabelle to share her work with the world. “I had some experience with this. And as Isabelle mentioned, a couple of years back, her father had brain cancer, so on a very personal, firsthand level, she’s experienced what it means to grapple with cancer inside your family and to watch someone go through a major surgery and chemo and recovery,” Walsh said.What started as a simple hobby soon turned into a community service. The mother and daughter decided to support cancer research and patient care by selling these photographs. They chose Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as the beneficiary. “It started as a hobby and turned out she’s really got a very good eye,” Walsh said.“And the idea was just to bring these two things together, an experience that was initially very terrible, alongside the love of creative practice and how do we kind of put that together in a way that can have community impact,” she added.
The exhibition
On September 13, the VFW Post on Prospect Avenue in Windsor Terrace opened its doors for the print sale. The photographs came down from the park walls and moved into the neighbourhood itself, which, as it happened, was the whole point. The turnout surprised Isabelle. Attendees were delightful and were purchasing her photographs. “It went really well. A lot of people came, and a lot of people bought pictures and some people just donated money. I thought it was really good,” she told the outlet. By the end of the afternoon, 27 of the 30 prints had found homes.What made the day resonate beyond the sales numbers was the collaboration. It was truly a community effort. A local print lab handled the production. A neighbourhood copy shop printed the promotional posters. The space itself was locally owned. “We had a locally owned space. And I also actually would like to shout out a local print lab that did the prints for us. A local copy shop printed out posters for us. It really was a kind of coming together,” Walsh said.For her mother, watching the project move from idea to year-long documentation to community event was its own reward. “I’m really, really proud. Obviously I’m biased, but I’m really proud of her for putting this all together. And the fact that it was like a year-long project doing documentary photography for a long time and then having it culminate in this.”Meanwhile, the teen is navigating the familiar territory of deciding who she might become. Photography, science, medicine and psychology are some of the subjects she is interested in.
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