New York City, 1980’s. The fiscal crisis of the late 1970’s had resulted in record levels homelessness that were only recently surpassed by the 2017’s estimation of more than 60,000 homeless residents. Social and racial tensions were growing in the five boroughs. “The South Bronx had burnt out, Brownsville too. There were vast landscapes of empty lots all around. The impact of the economic depression in the city was considerable despite the fact that Reagan was in office”, describes Ricky Flores, a Puerto-Rican photographer from the Bronx.
Active during the turbulent years of New York history, Flores is exhibited as part of Whose Streets? Our Streets!: New York City, 1980-2000, at the Bronx Documentary Center, in New York. The result of one and a half year of research initiated by photographer and former Village Voice photo editor, Meg Handler, and historian Tamar Carroll, author of Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism, the show is disturbingly timely.
“What is fascinating is that you can see it mirrored now”, explains Flores, referring to 1991’s turning point in racial tensions, when a black boy called Gavin Cato was struck and killed by an automobile in the motorcade of a rebbe in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In response to the event, black and Orthodox Jewish residents immediately turned against each other in what turned out to be deadly riots that were a major issue in the 1993 mayoral race, contributing to the defeat of African American Mayor David Dinkins. “Today, we have a black president in office and, instead of continuing the legacy, we are going back 180 degrees. This was the feeling the Rudy Giuliani affair gave us at the time”, Flores continues.
One of the images in the show, dated April 1995, by photographer and activist Carolina Kroon, represents a coordinated protest that was indeed meant to draw awareness and build opposition to the budget cuts proposed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The coalition of hundreds of activists blocked two bridges and two tunnels in Manhattan during the height of the rush hour. “This protest had a lot of media attention and Giuliani backed off on many of these cuts. It was meaningful to see that something visible could become actionable. That’s why it’s important to document it”, Kroon, who took the picture, comments.
What this photograph shows too is how all the protests blended with each other – students, homeless, health care workers, AIDS activists, the disabled and families of people killed by the police, gay rights activists, racial minorities. All the movements were a continuation of the same thing. “It was so sequential. For a few years, there was one event happening after the other. People began to march and disrupt cities in very different and creative ways”, Flores recalls.
And they took the police off guard many times, just as on December 21, 1987, when they jumped on train tracks for the first time to protest against the Howard Beach racial killing verdict. “New York was very broken at the time, but it was also vibrant, alive, in your face”, describes photographer Richard Sandler. “People forget that most things that we have in place in society are because people have fought for them. There is a tendency to complain but not to get involved in ways that can affect change. I hope the show will influence the younger generation, and the older generation to get back on the train track!” Kroon exclaims.
There is an obvious activist component to the show, and to the associated website. A mine of information, the online version features most of the pictures displayed at the Bronx Documentary Center, along with contextualizing texts and video interviews with some of the 38 exhibited photographers. As co-curator, Meg Handler, explains: “From the very beginning, we conceptualized the website as an extension of the show. There is the desire for this archive to support activism, and the website does that for now.”
So does the form of the exhibition. “65 images are wheat pasted on the walls outside of the gallery space, which enables the community to engage with it in the public space”, Handler adds. “Historically, it was a form of protest, of activism.”
The exhibition emphasizes between the lines how photography is intimately related to activism. Those years notably saw the rise of an agency of a new kind, Impact Visuals, who distributed many of the photographers exhibited in the show. “It was a news agency but there was a very strong political aspect to it , because we were covering untold stories, in depth”, describes Kroon, who started her career at Impact Visuals. “Impact was a very progressive photo agency, and it was probably an inspiration for newer photo agencies like Noor”, Handler abounds.
If they were not all members of Impact Visuals, all photographers featured in the show are known for their strong political engagement: “As a Puerto Rican I had a unique take on what oppression looked like. I lived it. When I was hearing the fire truck coming down, I knew it could be for my building or the one point across the street. In the meantime here I was with a camera documenting my community, friends and family members. So, my work was both political and intensely personal”, Flores articulates.
On various levels, the quantity of questions unraveled by the exhibition is overwhelming and inspires engagement. As Kroon puts it: “Most of us in that selection see activism and documenting activism as something that is always needed. Even if Hilary had won an immense work would have needed to be done. Having the extreme opposite happen, it is worse that most of us could imagine, our work becomes even more important. That makes us remember that thousands of people have been involved in working for change for thousands of years.” It’s a must see.
Laurence Cornet
Laurence Cornet is a journalist specializing in photography and an independent curator based in New York.
‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’: New York City, 1980-2000
January 14 – March 5, 2017
Bronx Documentary Center
614 Courtlandt Ave
Bronx, NY 10451
USA
