On Saturday, January 19, a new photographic show opened up at the Bronx Documentary Center. The show was titled Seis del Sur, or Six from the South, an exhibition in Black and White by six photographers from the Bronx. The photographs date from the late 1970s to the 1980s, a time when the Bronx had declined through a combination of factors including real estate redlining, the misconceived policy of planned shrinkage of municipal services, a boom in high-rise housing projects in the area, and of course, the real “bull in the china shop,” the construction of Robert Moses’ Cross-Bronx Expressway.
As young photographers who, with one exception, did not know each other back then, these six men documented life in the South Bronx, capturing both the massive destruction of building infrastructure (much by arson) and the ever-fascinating human drama of life on the street. As Michael Kamber, the founder of the Center, states, “There is a lot of community, social activism, families and people just going on with their lives the best way they could.” This is a wonderful show, and I encourage all to come up and see it.
I have selected a few works by these men, which I will show at the end of this blog post; but, in order to record them, I had to return the next day. Attendance at the opening of the show was so enormous that viewing the art was impossible, getting to the beer, wine and food table was a major challenge, and at least half of the attendees at any one time were socializing on the street outside as a consequence of the opening’s success.
So, on Saturday, I turned my camera on people at the show’s opening and even managed to capture some of the artists. I begin with these portraits, then follow them with some pictures of the art on display, which I took the next day.
South Bronx People, now
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Bronx Documentary Center, 614 Courtlandt Ave., Bronx, NY |
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Opening night, Seis del Sur show, Bronx Documentary Center, Saturday, January 19, 2013 |
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Opening night, Seis del Sur show, Bronx Documentary Center, Saturday, January 19, 2013 |
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Opening night, Seis del Sur show, Bronx Documentary Center, Saturday, January 19, 2013 |
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Corrine & Amanda, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
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Libertad & Linda, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
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Mychal, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
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Kali & John (“Chi-Chi” Rosado), Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
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Moncho and daughter, Opening night, Seis del Sur show
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Edwin Pagán, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
Edwin Pagán is one of the photographers who also would take up filmmaking. He may best be known now as the founder of the website and online publication, Latin Horror, and is currently producing a documentary film, Bronx Is Burning, chronicling the rise, fall and resurrection of the South Bronx.
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Ángel Franco, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
Ángel Franco is another of the photographers featured in Seis del Sur. Today he is a Senior Photographer at the New York Times and was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for a ten-part series of articles in 2000 entitled “How Race Is Lived in America.” In recalling this earlier work of his in the Bronx, he felt the need to set the record straight, because officials “just called it crime…So I said, I’m going back to photograph our holocaust.”
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Francisco Molina Reyes II, Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
Francisco Molina Reyes II is a third of these Bronx photographers. He has been a street photographer ever since he started shooting in the South Bronx in 1975, but that street life also seduced him to become a writer and chronicler of the Latin Music scene.
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Joe Conzo, Jr., Opening night, Seis del Sur show |
The South Bronx, then
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Bronx Documentary Center, Seis del Sur show, General view |
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Bronx Documentary Center, Seis del Sur show, Couple |
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Seis del Sur show, E Pagán, D Gonzalez, J Conzo [left-to-right] |
How do I know that this is a short street? Because I live on it. This is east 140th Street, looking west to Third Avenue. I live in the first taller building that you see on the right, the one with some faded advertising letters on its side. They’re still there, only a bit more faded.
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Seis del Sur show, Á Franco, R Flores, F Reyes [left-to-right] |
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Seis del Sur show, Joe Conzo, Jr., CAFA |
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Seis del Sur show, Ricky Flores, Johnny on the Box |
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Seis del Sur show, Joe Conzo, Jr., Sisters: Abigail & Rachel, 1979 |
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Seis del Sur show, David Gonzalez, Pistoleros, 1979 |
I end with David Gonzalez‘s Pistoleros: four boys brandishing five plastic water pistols (and I know where this was taken as well by the angle quoins on the building behind). These are beautiful kids, and they exude a sense of playfulness and camaraderie. The guns may be plastic and fake, but the idea of defending turf and acting in solidarity is all too real, and adds tension to their playful gestures.As delightful as this image is, I can’t help thinking of its obverse, and that is kids exactly the ages of these boys, only holding real pistols or AR-15 assault rifles, which is what the NRA and certain other non-profit groups funded by the gun industry is promoting for the youth of America–an attempt “to get newcomers shooting something.” I refer to the front page article in this past Sunday’s New York Times by Mike McIntire: “Selling a New Generation on Guns.”
David Gonzalez gives us an image of mirth and innocence. Mike McIntire exposes a new, dystopic future that could make William Golding’s Lord of the Flies seem like an innocent cakewalk.
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