In photos: Washington DC’s Black communities facing up to gentrification

Growing up in Washington DC​’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood, photographer Beverly Price remembers a feeling of belonging in the predominantly Black community. ​“I grew up on Lexington Place NE, just a few blocks from the Capitol, and it really felt like a village,” she says. ​“All the children played together, neighbours knew each other, and people would have pizza parties, block parties, and gatherings where everyone was welcome.” 

But after returning home from prison in 2006, Price realised things had changed. Her family sold their house two years later; today she feels estranged from the place she once called home. ​“My connection with place is really what led me to photography,” she says. ​“Washington DC is not just where I am from, it is a place that raised me, taught me, and shaped how I see people and community.” 

“As I got older, I started to see the city change very quickly,” Price continues. ​“Families were moving and a lot of the communities I remembered were disappearing or being pushed out. The everyday life I grew up around was not being documented in a real and honest way. I felt like I needed to document the people and places that mattered to me before they disappeared.”

• Read next: Gordon Parks’ luminous photos of Black American life

In 2016, Price began photographing children in nearby Anacostia and Barry Farms, utilising the lessons of love, care, and belonging to craft a timeless portrait of Black life in Washington DC. Selections from the series are now on view in A Language We Share: Beverly Price and Gordon Parks at The Center for Art and Advocacy in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibition pairs Price’s photographs in southeast Washington DC with images that Gordon Parks made in those same neighbourhoods in 1942, the same year he joined the fabled ranks of the Farm Security Administration​’s photography section. 

An intergenerational story of Black life, A Language We Share is an extraordinary full circle moment for Price. ​“In 1997, when I was in eighth grade, each student had to research a different Black historical figure and write a report. I was assigned to research Gordon Parks,” she says. 

Price remembers visiting her local library in northeast DC, perusing Parks’s books, and being struck by an image of a woman and her dog leaning out of a window. ​“That image stayed in my mind because it reminded me of the TV show 227 that my mother used to watch,” Price says of the 1980s Black sitcom, also set in northeast. ​“His photographs looked like people I knew and places that felt close to my world. I never forgot the feeling of his images.” 

• Read next: A portrait of Black power and pride across the US

Three decades later, their photographs hang side by side. ​“Seeing Anacostia through his eyes and then through my own made me realise that some things change over time, but many things also stay the same,” Price says. ​“Community, resilience, family, and everyday life continue, even as the city changes around it. I think both of our work tries to honour that and make sure those lives and moments are not forgotten.”

Like fellow DC native Nate Langston Palmer, who has been documenting the Columbia Heights street dance scene, Price is devoted to the collective instinct to preserve, protect, and honour the community by shining a light on its greatness. ​“A lot of young people in communities like Anacostia and Barry Farms grow up feeling invisible or only visible when something bad happens. Photography can change that,” she says. ​“When you photograph someone with love and intention, you are telling them that they matter, that their life is important, and that they deserve to be remembered and seen in a full and human way.” 

A Language We Share: Beverly Price and Gordon Parks is on view at The Center for Art and Advocacy in Brooklyn through June 19, 2026.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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