A Brooklyn photographer found a willing and unique subject at Zuccotti Park during the height of the Occupy Wall Street encampment and now she is showing off the fruits of her labor at a new exhibit. NY1's Arts reporter Stephanie Simon filed the following reporter.

After watching the "99 percent" take over Downtown Manhattan's Zucotti Park, photographer Vanessa Bahmani of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn was 100 percent sure what she had to do.

"I was just really intrigued by what I was hearing and the negative mainstream media perception that everyone there was just a bunch of crazy lazy hippies. I needed to get down there and see for myself," says Bahmani.

She says what she saw was a cross-section of people joining together to create a better society. So combing her passion for activism and art, she went back down with a medium-format camera and black-and-white film and set up a place to shoot portraits.

"I started to photograph and document what I was seeing and it was really remarkable to be able to photograph and give people a dry erase board and a marker and have them write why they were there and write their voice and photograph that," says Bahmani. "I could really contrast what I thought the media was saying about the occupiers."

Bahmani's series is called "We Are The 99 Percent," and some of her images will be featured in an Occupy Wall Street exhibit taking place at the end of this month at the South Street Seaport that is being curated by the Museum of the City of New York.

But for Bahmani and may others, the movement is not history yet. She is raising money online to continue her work and take perhaps a thousand more portraits at future Occupy rallies and marches.

While it didn't amount to much, Bahmani did get some contributions along the way from her subjects.

"People would give me like a dollar or just a hug or whatever they could at the moemnt because they felt this was really important," says Bahmani.

She originally give her subjects a dry erase board because she wanted to be environmentally friendly, but she soon found out it also forced her subjects to be concise with their messages.

Some people who feared being recognized covered their faces for their photo shoot, but Bahmani says what's important is that she gives a voice to everyone, including some who might be considered the 1 percent.