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Bronxites look back beyond the burning By Adam Wisnieski awisnieski@riverdalepress.com
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EDWIN PAGÁN’S ‘Summertime, South Bronx,’ 1987, below.
he most insulting aspect of the media’s coverage of the South Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s is that it portrayed Bronxites as helpless. So says David Gonzalez, who grew up on Beck Street in Longwood and currently lives in Riverdale. “The borough got this reputation for almost being beyond salvation, being beyond hope,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “In our worst moments of our history, you know, the seeds for the borough’s comeback were there. The seeds were there.” Mr. Gonzalez is one of six Puerto Rican photographers — dubbed Seis del Sur for the exhibit running through Friday, March 8 at the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose — who took pictures of the Bronx during the borough’s most infamous era and who offer a different thesis for the Bronx. Though they didn’t know each other then, they have come together as adults to show their photos of life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From notorious scenes of rubble and devastation to rarely seen shots of citizens working to get by and communities fighting back, Seis del Sur offers a rare look at the life, not just the destruction, of the South Bronx. The show’s opening on Saturday at the Bronx Documentary Center was a Who’s Who of Bronx artists and writers. Even former Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer
‘FIRE AND FAITH,’ 1980, by David Gonzalez. stopped by to check out the black and white images hanging from the small gallery’s ceiling. The place was so packed, the crowd overflowed onto the street, where officers from the 40th Precinct stood to monitor the scene, or in one officer’s case, sneak a peek at the photographs for himself. “The genius of this exhibit was that they were able to create an important historic document,” said Bill Aguado, Riverdalian and longtime advocate for Bronx artists. “It’s a real celebration of South Bronx culture, Puerto Rican culture, Latino culture and it really demonstrates the elegance and the level of artistry of the professional photographer.” Mr. Gonzalez, now an accom-
plished journalist who works for The New York Times, left the Bronx to go to Yale, but returned in 1979 to teach photography on Charlotte Street. In the short time he was gone, the Bronx had changed from “anonymous to notorious, a brand name for urban decay and despair,” he writes. So he picked up a camera to document what he saw. “For five years, I wandered from Fordham Road to Mott Haven, taking thousands of pictures in parks, street fairs, stores and even empty lots,” he wrote in a 2009 Times piece, “Faces in the Rubble.” He packed the photos away and many of them were never printed. Some of them — including a photo of a couple dancing in the street at a Mott Haven block party in 1979 — he didn’t even remember taking until he dug up the photos a few years ago.
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he exhibit, which the group jokes was 30 years in the making and 34 months in the planning, is the result of a series of coincidences. At the opening of an exhibit of Joe Conzo’s work at Hunter College in 2009, Mr. Conzo and the other five — Edwin Pagán, Ricky Flores, Ángel Franco, Francisco Reyes and Mr. Gonzalez — struck up a conversation about what it was like to shoot the Bronx back in the day. Shortly afterward, Mr. Gonzalez posted photos online of his Beck Street block. “About 10 minutes later on Facebook, Ricky Flores puts up a picture of the same exact building,” Mr. Gonzalez said. The other guys saw the shots and started uploading their own
photos of the same locations. One of the other photographers, Mr. Pagan, was even in one of Mr. Conzo’s photos of a hip-hop show. “We said, ‘This is pretty spooky. We were standing in the same places at the same time and didn’t know each other,’” Mr. Gonzalez said. The goal of the show is not to ignore the Bronx’s hardships, but to show life amid the destruction and to illustrate how scenes shot by the many hit-and-run photographers don’t tell the complete story of the South Bronx. “One of the real motivations for this show is to show that in the heart of this era, when it was perceived to be beyond hope and salvation, life persisted,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Yes, we know things were bad and bad things happened, we don’t shy away from that. What we’re trying to say is the reality of life in these neighborhoods was lot more complicated and nuanced than a lot of people gave the people of the South Bronx credit for.” Take Mr. Conzo’s photo of a community group protesting the film Fort Apache, The Bronx because of perceived stereotypes of blacks and Puerto Ricans; or his photo of Bronxites trying to stop actresses who would play prostitutes from entering the film’s set. In one Edwin Pagan photo, a woman walks home under the El on Westchester Avenue, carrying groceries and a plant. From across the room at the opening on Saturday, you could hear a mother telling her young son to look at the photos because, “You have to know your history. This is what the neighborhood was like.” ‘Seis Del Sur: Dispatches from home by six Boricua photographers,’ is on display through Friday, March 8, at the Bronx Documentary Center, 614 Courtlandt Ave. The gallery is open Thursdays and Fridays, from 4 to 7 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, from 2 to 6 p.m.
‘A BOY CAUGHT in Crossfire of Drug Dispute’ by Ángel Franco, below.
Photo by Marisol Díaz
‘SEIS DEL SUR: Dispatches from home by six Boricua photographers’ opened to a packed house at the Bronx Documentary Center on Saturday.
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