Bronx Boys (University of Texas Press, Fall 2014) presents a collection of 123 powerful duotone photographs made by Stephen Shames from 1977-2000 that chronicles the lives of these kids growing up in the Bronx. Shames captures the brutality of the times— the fights, shootings, arrests, and drug deals—that eventually left many of the young men dead or in jail. But he also records the joy and humanity of the Bronx boys, as they mature, fall in love, and have children of their own. Challenging our perceptions of a neighborhood that at the time these photographs were made was too easily dismissed by some as irredeemable, Bronx Boys shows that hope and redemption is possible everywhere.
A 1977 assignment for Look magazine took award-winning photographer Stephen Shames to the Bronx, where he began photographing a group of boys coming of age in what was at the time one of the toughest and poorest neighborhoods in the United States. The Bronx boys lived on streets ravaged by poverty, drugs, violence, and gangs. They bonded together and raised themselves in “crews,” adolescent families they created for protection and companionship. Shames’s empathy for the boys earned their trust and respect, and over the next two decades, as the crack cocaine epidemic devastated the neighborhood, they allowed him extraordinary access into their lives on the street and in their homes.
STEPHEN SHAMES STATEMENT ABOUT BRONX BOYS
“The Bronx has a terrible beauty— stark and harsh—like the desert. At first glance you imagine nothing can survive. Then you notice life going on all around. People adapt, survive, and even prosper in this urban moonscape of quick pleasures and false hopes … Often I am terrified of The Bronx. Other times it feels like home. My images reflect the interplay between good and evil; violence and love; chaos and family are the themes—but this is not a documentation. There is no “story line”. There is only a feeling.”
BOOK
Bronx Boys
Photographs by Stephen Shames
ISBN-13: 9780292759428
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Publication date: 10/15/2014
Pages: 224
