Taking pictures to change the way we see the Bronx

Good morning. It is Friday. We’re looking at the Bronx, as seen in photos of people who live there. We’ll also find out why E. Jean Carroll’s attorney says Carroll is considering a new lawsuit against Donald Trump.

Everyday Bronx has been described as telling stories that change the way the world sees the Bronx, one picture at a time. It started with an Instagram account in 2014 and now has some 6,000 photos – and an exhibition. Our colleague Melissa Guerrero, who spoke to some photographers, explains how they document life in the neighbourhood.

Kayla Beltran, 23, wanders the nature trails in Pelham Bay Park and snaps photos. And in February, when daring swimmers take to the water for the Bronx Polar Bears event, she heads to nearby Orchard Beach to shoot.

Tara Garcia, 51, knows the beach too, but from a different perspective. Her mother loved to sunbathe there — and when Garcia moved back to the Bronx after a few years in Westchester County, “little field trips” to Orchard Beach turned into photo shoots on her own.

And Edgar Santana, 44, who grew up to be a street photographer, has a photo of a childhood trip to City Island on his dad’s boat taken long before he first picked up a camera.

What connects them is their desire to document the Bronx as they experienced it. That made Everyday Bronxan Instagram account with pictures of the municipality, an outlet for them.

“We really wanted to create a community and conversation between other Bronxites, through the account and through the posts, each individual post,” says Rhynna M. Santos, who started running the account nearly a decade ago.

The main goal, she added, was to create “a really vibrant online archive of the Bronx and what people are going through in the Bronx right now,” with images of people spending time in the borough.

That furthers another goal of Everyday Bronx: combating negative stereotypes. And there is also a largely untapped opportunity. “The Bronx is a neighborhood that really doesn’t get photographed,” said Santana, “so it’s up to us as residents of the Bronx and Bronxites to put the neighborhood on the map.”

Santos, who is a photographer and a Bronxite himself, and a handful of volunteers like Beltran and Santana post submissions from Bronx residents, former residents, and visitors. The account is part of a larger initiative called “Everyday Projects,” which includes several “Everyday” accounts from around the world. A selection of the more than 6,000 photos from the Instagram account is made on display at the Bronx Documentary Center through Sunday and will also be featured on the Photoville Festival in June.

Everyday Bronx combines memories with an appreciation for photography as an artistic medium made more accessible in the smartphone era.

Garcia, who works in advertising, has been taking photos since she was in high school. “The only reason my family has any documentation of the last, I don’t know, 40 years is because I brought my camera,” she said. Years later she discovered that photography had always been in her blood. “I took over from my grandparents, who were avid photographers themselves, but I didn’t know this about them because all this stuff is locked in a closet.”

Michael Young, who works at the Bronx Documentary Center and is a contributor to the Instagram account, grew up in Brooklyn but has lived in the Bronx for 23 years. A favorite photo he took showed children playing, one of them jumping on a pogo stick. “I think this image is a reminder of my childhood and the carefree way we used to play and just enjoy the summer,” he said.

Ed García Conde, founder of the Welcome2TheBronx news site, said one of his favorite photos shows a transvestite dancing on the steps of the abandoned Bronx borough courthouse on East 161st Street. “As a gay man who grew up in the South Bronx, I also have a passion for documenting the queer people of the South Bronx because I feel like they are super underrepresented,” said García Conde.

He also remembers documenting the carefree nature of salsa dancers at Puerto Rican street fairs.

“As kids, we didn’t realize we were poor,” said García Conde. “You know, at least we lived a very rich life full of culture, art and music and dance, because everywhere we went, that happened, and a lot of it, of course, was probably a reaction to the poverty that we were living, by being make the most of what we had.”

Santos said she was pleased that the account allows people outside the Bronx to see the district more accurately. “But I’m really doing this for Bronxites,” Santos said, adding that she “really wanted to give them the opportunity to enjoy the specialness and uniqueness of our neighborhood, and that we come from an incredible history, something that we really should be very proud.”

Weather

It’s a mostly sunny day around the mid-80’s. Expect a chance for showers late into the night, with temperatures dropping to around the mid-60’s.

ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING

In effect until Thursday (Solemnity of Ascension).

The latest Metro news

E. Jean Carroll didn’t watch CNN’s town hall with former President Donald Trump on Wednesday night. She was asleep, so she didn’t hear him call her claim of assault in a department store locker room “phony” and a “made-up story.”

But her lawyer sent her a transcript. She called his comments “despicable” and “dirty” after saying she only read the first paragraph. She was “offended by better people,” she told The Times in an interview, and was furious that the 15-year-old stylist was talking about what Trump had said. Young people “can’t listen to this nonsense and this old-fashioned image of women, which is a caveman image,” she said.

Trump’s appearance on CNN came the day after a federal jury in Manhattan found him liable for sexually assaulting her and liable for defaming her last year, when he described her claim of sexual assault as a “complete scam” and a “Hoax and a lie” in a social media post.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said Carroll is considering filing a new defamation suit against Trump. The former president, answering questions from the moderator, Kaitlan Collins, called Carroll a “crazy job” and said the civil suit he lost was “a rigged deal.” He also mocked Carroll, saying her accusations related to “handkerchiefs in a locker room.”

Kaplan said a decision on whether to file a new libel suit would come “probably the next day.” It would be Carroll’s third lawsuit against Trump. In addition to the case that Trump lost on Tuesday, Carroll has another defamation case pending. Trump has argued in that case that he cannot be charged because it concerns comments he made in his official role as president.

METROPOLITAN Diary

Subway love

Dear Diary:

After we weaved paper hearts at the Met Museum
on that cold, cold Friday night
we took the subway home.

A woman sang a Beyoncé song
and I asked if she was Beyoncé
and she said she was.

Another woman was folding red foil paper.
I saw that she was making an origami heart.
So I took her one of our woven hearts
and she gave me hers.

— Esther K. Smith