IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx: Part II
True to The Stiletto's prediction (fifth item), The New York Times has now published its fourth article in a month (plus a multimedia feature) on The Bronx - this one from journalist David Gonzalez, who had been “raised to get a good education, become a doctor and escape" and had "instead come right back to teach photography - on Charlotte Street, no less, the world’s most famous slum”:
Thirty years ago this summer, I returned to the South Bronx, where I grew up, with a Yale diploma in one hand and a beat-up Pentax camera in the other. …
In the four years I had been away, the South Bronx had gone from anonymous to notorious, a brand name for urban decay and despair. …
Private tragedies became public humiliation in 1977. Howard Cosell damned the place, declaring, “The Bronx is burning,” as the cameras showed fires flickering beyond Yankee Stadium. … President Jimmy Carter made an obligatory pilgrimage - as Ronald Reagan would during his campaign in 1980 - for a photo-op amid the rubble.
The only way I could even try to confront this confusion was to slice it up into snapshots, each frame giving the illusion of a neat answer to inexplicable questions. For five years, I wandered from Fordham Road to Mott Haven, taking thousands of pictures in parks, street fairs, stores and even empty lots.
The negatives ended up stuffed in a closet. And the South Bronx was quietly transformed in the late 1980s by community campaigns that created new homes, community gardens and smaller schools. I became a journalist and traveled to Latin America, where I confronted poverty that made New York’s worst look tame.
But I always came back to the Bronx. I have spent much of my professional life chronicling the same streets I photographed as a young man. Six years ago, I moved back for good, with my wife and son. Some people thought I was crazy; cynics swore it hadn’t changed much from the Bad Old Days of 1979. …
Whether through sheer luck or providence, the buildings from my childhood survived the 1970s crucible. Some days, I can drive through every neighborhood I ever called home, knowing that by the end of my journey, I am happily and exactly where I should be.
Comments