Author: YADIRA GONZALEZ

https://medium.com/@yadiragonzaleznyc/street-vendors-respond-to-being-treated-like-trash-c3aab2dc2756

Jerome Avenue contains portraits of the local people and businesses of the eponymous street captured by 18 photographers of the Bronx Photo League from the Bronx Documentary Center. Many of the subjects work in auto repair shops, hair salons, grocery stores and as street vendors. The photos, all in black and white, were taken by the photographers using 30-year-old Hasselblad film cameras, which have 12 pictures to a roll, and manual-focus lenses; the photos were developed in the BDC’s darkroom. Photographers spent the summer and fall of 2015 documenting the community. As many other photographers have tried to capture before, this book is a compilation of photos of a neighborhood desperately trying to evade gentrification and rezoning. Through the various images, it becomes clear that faith and family play a crucial role in maintaining optimism. Many of the photos that stuck out to me include families attending religious services, and parents who continue working as mechanics in order to support their children. The fear and overprotectiveness that the people feel for their community pervades the photographs, many of them accompanied by quotes from locals expressing their desire to preserve the culture of their thoroughfare for posterity. Alone, each photograph tells a story about a particular family or an individual that has established themself among the streets of the Bronx. Together, the photos work harmoniously to lead us into this world as if the viewer just hopped off the 4 train and took a stroll down the avenue, while keeping a respectful distance.

City officials announced that as of April 1, street vendors are no longer under the jurisdiction of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and instead they are now handled by the Department of Sanitation. Beloved street vendors are now more than ever being treated like trash. I hope to interview various street vendors and photograph their carts, and the food that they sell, with the hopes of capturing their response to this recent change. I’m curious if vendors are going to be more discreet with their stalls, or more flamboyant as a form of protest. I also hope to interview the Street Vendor Project that advocates for many of these vendors.

https://medium.com/@yadiragonzaleznyc/fiber-artists-mobilize-their-communities-with-a-little-activism-and-a-lot-of-yarn-f6e4130aa2e

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Story Idea: Fiber artists have always established themselves as community activists. Winter months are considered peak knitting and crochet months and so there is much activity among the fiber arts community right now. For my story I would like to profile fiber artists that leave marks on their neighborhoods. I would like to focus on two organizations/artists: one is a woman @Carmencommunityartist who has spent the past few years “yarn-bombing” her neighborhood and offering free crocheting classes. The other organization, called Knit the Rainbow, is based in Washington Heights and they provide handmade knit and crochet winter garments to homeless LGBTQ+ youth in New York City. 

Potential Images: 

• People knitting and/or crocheting
• A yarn-bombed neighborhood 
• Knit the Rainbow collecting garments