{"id":349054,"date":"2026-09-17T06:33:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349054\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T06:33:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:33:58","slug":"brooklyn-teen-turns-a-year-of-prospect-park-photography-into-cancer-fundraiser-brooklyn-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349054\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn teen turns a year of Prospect Park photography into cancer fundraiser \u2022 Brooklyn Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 17-year-old photographer Isabelle Ginsberg, a year of photographing Prospect Park<\/a> became about much more than finding the perfect shot. <\/p>\n

What began as a hobby evolved into a long-term photography project \u2014 and eventually a way for her to give back to a cause<\/a> that hits close to home. <\/p>\n

Ginsberg spent the past year documenting the park through its changing seasons, snapping everything from trees and wildlife to people, sports and quieter moments throughout the sprawling green space. <\/p>\n

The project was inspired in part by her family\u2019s experience with cancer. Ginsberg\u2019s father, Alex, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2020 and is now in remission. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just started taking photos for fun,\u201d Ginsberg told Brooklyn Paper. \u201cAnd 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\u2019s a cause really important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Prospect Park connection came naturally. <\/p>\n

Ginsberg and her mother, Lauren Walsh, would take weekend walks through the park, where she began photographing what caught her eye. Over time, those walks turned into that yearlong documentation of the park and the people that make it a neighborhood gathering place. <\/p>\n

\"\"Ginsberg documented Prospect Park through all four seasons, documenting the nature and people who inhabit it.(c) Isabelle Ginsberg, \u201cReflections,\u201d Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 2026.<\/p>\n

Walsh, who has a background in photography and experience in curating and organizing exhibitions, encouraged her daughter to share her work with a wider audience. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had some experience with this,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cAnd as Isabelle mentioned, a couple of years back, her father had brain cancer, so on a very personal firsthand level, she\u2019s experienced what it means to grapple with cancer inside your family and to watch someone go through a major surgery and chemo and recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother-daughter duo ultimately decided to combine photography with their desire to support cancer research and patient care, choosing Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center<\/a> as the beneficiary. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt started as a hobby and turned out she\u2019s really got a very good eye,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Walsh and Ginsberg emphasized the sense of community and importance of local production throughout the entire process.Photo courtesy of Lauren Walsh<\/p>\n

That idea culminated in a community print sale on Sept. 13 at the VFW Post on Prospect Avenue in Windsor Terrace.<\/p>\n

The event brought Isabelle\u2019s photographs out of the park and into the community, with proceeds benefiting Memorial Sloan Kettering for cancer research and patient care.<\/p>\n

Ginsberg said the event drew a strong turnout, with attendees purchasing photographs and others contributing through donations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went really well,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of people came and a lot of people bought pictures and some people just donated money. I thought it was really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fundraiser also became a community effort in its own right. The event was held in a locally owned space, while a local print lab produced the photographs and a local copy shop helped print promotional posters.<\/p>\n

\"\"On her fundraising site, Ginsberg has raised almost $4,000 for MSK Cancer Center, not counting the proceeds from the Sept. 15 event.(c) Isabelle Ginsberg, \u201cArch,\u201d Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a locally owned space,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cAnd I also actually would like to shout out a local print lab did the prints for us. A local copy shop printed out posters for us. It really was a kind of coming together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The response to her work was strong: Of the 30 framed prints displayed at the event, just three remained unsold by the end.<\/p>\n

The fundraiser has also brought together the different interests Isabelle is exploring as she looks toward college. Alongside photography, she has developed an interest in science, medicine, and psychology \u2014 interests that have increasingly overlapped with her creative work.<\/p>\n

At the fundraiser, Ginsberg even created an anonymous survey examining how spending time in nature affects mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause she had been photographing in Prospect Park, the survey was about how being in nature affects mental health,\u201d Walsh said. She added that it\u2019s psychological research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The surveys are now waiting to be analyzed, but the project reflects the intersection Ginsberg is exploring between creative work, science and helping others.<\/p>\n

\"\"As Ginsberg prepares to apply to colleges, she\u2019s using what she\u2019s learned about photography and mental health to guide her through those processes.(c) Isabelle Ginsberg, \u201cBicycles,\u201d Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve learned how photography can be used to connect with people and bring people together for a bigger cause,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Walsh, seeing her daughter take the project from an idea to a yearlong body of work \u2014 and then turn that work toward her community \u2014 has been especially meaningful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really, really proud,\u201d Ginsberg\u2019s mother said. \u201cObviously I\u2019m biased, but I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the project also reinforced the power of local connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think also what was really special to us was this emphasis on how important it is to bring community together,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cLike sometimes you think a local community is really small, but actually small can be super powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 17-year-old photographer Isabelle Ginsberg, a year of photographing Prospect Park became about much more than finding the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,6456,100,99,130485,130486,5049,29332,130487,130488,35877,52062,9,24,370,63,3419,15739,130489,24269,130490],"class_list":["post-349054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-community","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-teens","tag-cancer-fundraiser","tag-cancer-research","tag-community-events","tag-isabelle-ginsberg","tag-lauren-walsh","tag-local-artists","tag-memorial-sloan-kettering-cancer-center","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newsletter","tag-nyc","tag-photography","tag-prospect-park","tag-teen-artists","tag-windsor-terrace","tag-youth-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}