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.
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