'All The Queens Houses' Shows Borough's Diversity In Photos

SUNNYSIDE, QUEENS -- Rafael Herrin-Ferri is a seasoned architect, but not a single one of the hundreds of Queens homes showcased in his SoHo photo exhibit is considered beautiful by architectural standards.

Most of them are anything but, said Herrin-Ferri. In his words, the houses he photographs are "distasteful, kitschy, ill-proportioned, misshapen, or just plain ugly" to the naked eye.

But to the Spanish-born Sunnyside transplant, the mismatched houses packing the streets of his and surrounding Queens neighborhoods aren't just walls and roofs - They represent the diverse cultures of the residents living inside them.

"When so many people from so many cultures with so many different aesthetic preferences co-exist in a tight urban fabric it seems only natural that the streetscape should look like this, " Herrin-Ferri wrote on his website.

That's why he began a project in 2012 to document the diversity of Queens by photographing thousands of neighborhood houses.

"I basically just started photographing them and documenting them and it became more and more systematic and regularized until I kind of started realizing I was looking for a photogrpahic series," Herrin-Ferri told Patch.

That photo series - featuring houses from 34 Queens neighborhoods - turned into "All The Queens Houses," an exhibit now showing at the Architectural League Of New York in SoHo.

Herrin-Ferri has so far documented around a third of Queens in the series, which he calls an ongoing project. He's so far photographed his way through neighborhoods in West and Central Queens, snapping more than 5,000 pictures in the process. Next, Herrin-Ferri said he hopes to take his camera off the subway trail into neighborhoods along the Long Island Rail Road.

"Im continually and happily surprised every time I go out and look for things," he said. "There are moments where there's a bit of monotony and repetition, but it seems like there's always an exception and that's the part that's so refreshing."

The League's exhibition showcases 273 photos of each neighborhood's most eclectic houses, many of which feature humor-laced captions reminiscent of a broker listing. The exhibit shows on Fridays from 2-6 p.m.

Herrin-Ferri said the houses and apartment buildings he photographs couldn't be more different from one another, with a range of styles, shapes, sizes and colors found in each neighborhood - sometimes on the same street.

The mismatched architecture represents what he calls an "urbanism of tolerance" that's unique to New York City.

"The houses are as varied as the people one sits next to on the New York subway," he summarized.

Lead photo via Rafael Herrin-Ferri/"All The Houses"