Pictures of the Day: Lebanon and Elsewhere

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Photos from Lebanon, Syria, Washington and Greece.

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At Photoville, Hicks’s Photographic Year

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What’s contained in a year? For Tyler Hicks, a staff photographer for The New York Times, it’s trips to places like Gaza or Syria and photographing the longstanding yet reliably devastating conflicts there. Or to the Gulf of Oman, where the aircraft carrier he was on, covering a different story with C. J. Chivers, changed course suddenly to pursue and capture Somali pirates.

Or to the Congolese jungles in Central Africa, chasing a story on poaching, which meant chasing poachers and their prey.

“I’m used to having stuff happen in front of me,” said Mr. Hicks, 44, jet-lagged from his recent wedding in Massachusetts â€" did we mention he just got married? â€" to his home in Nairobi, Kenya. “This was different for me, because for the most part, I was photographing animals.”

The subject, he added, “is elusive, you have to really chase it â€" it’s actually trying to get away from you.”

On Thursday, Mr. Hicks’s work from a year’s worth of assignments will be on view at Photoville, an unorthodox photography show in Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s a collection of shipping containers sitting in a sort of mall of curated photo projects, where the casual bystander can contemplate what a year means to Mr. Hicks, or to the subjects of his photographs.

“Photoville is about bringing the photographic community together,” said Sam Barzilay, who founded this effort along with Laura Roumanos. Photoville is hosted by United Photo Industries, where Mr. Barzilay is creative director and Ms. Roumanos is executive producer.

“It’s so politicized and so fragmented,” he said, “and one of our aims is that I want to get everyone to play well with everybody else.”

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times In Gaza City, residents surveyed damage to their homes after Israeli airstrikes. November 2012.

And play is the operative word: Mr. Barzilay, whose UPI has put on nontraditional photo shows on ferries and fences, said he actively courts a “circuslike, big tent” kind of vibe. When asked him if there would be carnival rides, à la Coney Island’s Cyclone, he answered without hesitation, “If I could think of a photographic ride, I would do that.” But they are working out a game of photographic dodge ball, where blindfolded participants in an assigned space must avoid being captured by the lens.

“It’s much more of a rough-and-tumble photography kind of event,” Mr. Barzilay said. “It’s not quiet photography.”

Like last year, there are food trucks and beer, but there will also be nighttime projections, lectures, panels and workshops. The exhibits â€" there are 47 in all â€" include work from Peter van Agtmael’s forthcoming book, “Disco Night Sept. 11,” which presents a domestic view of America’s wars from 2006 to 2013. Nina Berman has a container featuring photographs documenting fracking along the Marcellus Shale. Open Society Foundations and the Chris Hondros Fund have presentations, as do the International Center of Photography and Photo District News. Ann Curry of NBC News has a container, using her own photographs to expand on issues she has covered as a broadcast journalist.

All told, it’s an engaging experience. Mr. Barzilay noted that UPI, which is only two-and-a-half years old, will â€" in September alone, in New York alone â€" have 59 exhibits across the city. “What reasonable human being would want to do this?” he asked, semi-rhetorically. “Why are we doing this again? Remind me, why?”

He answered himself.

“You’re doing something that’s so much more than one exhibit,” he said. “Something so communal.”

Mr. Hicks, who recalled the countless times he has photographed troubled places, last year and others, might agree. Photography’s aim is engagement. “It’s not just going to a place, taking pictures and leaving, and trying to understand what’s going on and both sides of what’s going on,” Mr. Hicks said.

Like in Gaza. “Occasionally there’s a place and a time when you can actually reach out and feel as if you’re connecting to the people, and they in turn respond to you,” he said. “You can feel that you are there for a purpose.”

Photoville reflects that spirit. “That’s what it’s about,” Mr. Barzilay said. “It takes hundreds of people to take a small thing and make it huge. It’s meant to evoke community â€" it’s not a city, it’s a village.”

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times In the Gulf of Oman, American sailors guided a Somali pirate from an Iranian fishing vessel to a waiting Navy boat. January 2012.

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