The Bronx Documentary Center is an accessible, community-oriented gallery and educational space located in Melrose, one of New York City’s fastest-growing neighborhoods. Melrose is the proud home to immigrants from around the globe, including many from the Caribbean, West Africa, Mexico, and South and Central America. To serve the Melrose community, the BDC opens up local discussions through film and photography and provides access to world-class exhibitions and screenings, all the while being fully rooted in the concerns and needs of Bronx residents. Additionally, the BDC not only employs Bronx residents, but also promotes educational programming that empowers our neighbors to tell their own stories. By carving out a unique arts space, the BDC seeks to encourage Bronx residents to participate in the vibrant culture of Melrose and beyond.
Presented by Bronx Documentary Center
The Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) is proud to present the work of our 11-to-18-year-old Bronx Junior Photo League (BJPL) students, all created during this past school year.
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The Bronx Documentary Center’s both senior and junior photo leagues were asked by the New York Times to make self-portraits; how they defined self-portrait was up to them. Their resulting images are an insight into who they are and what they’ve reflected on at home during the time of COVID-19.
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Through photos, words, and multimedia, the Bronx Documentary Center exhibition, Trump Revolution: Climate Crisis, documents the current president’s overturning of decades of American environmental policy, and its profound effects on American society, and our planet at large.
The BDC’s Bronx Junior Photo League (BJPL) spent the 2017-2018 school year interviewing and photographing Bronx activists from the ’70s and today, who originally started, and continue to be community leaders on issues such as: public housing conditions, gun violence, public safety and more.
“The Oldest Colony” is a meditation on the Puerto Rican identity as a product of the island’s political relationship with the United States as an unincorporated territory, and now as it morphs with the economic crisis and hurricane Maria’s aftermath.
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In recent years Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, with levels of violence unmatched by any country in the Western Hemisphere. Attacks and threats against journalists and photojournalists are a daily occurrence and assassinations are routine.
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These 12 to 18-year-old Bronx students have created windows into the lives of a Vietnamese nun, a Dominican artist, and an exiled Russian journalist, among others. This work reveals the challenges and triumphs of life in today’s New York City immigrant community.
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This exhibition documents and celebrates the workers and trades people of Jerome Avenue, one of New York City’s few remaining working class neighborhoods where many still make a living by working in small shops and factories or by repairing auto-mobiles.
Learn MoreA Youth Artist Exchange panel featuring the Bronx Junior Photo League
Learn MoreStudents in the Bronx Junior Photo League (BJPL), the Bronx Documentary Center’s (BDC) free documentary storytelling and college success program for 6th through 12th grade students, have been documenting social justice issues and community-based stories since 2013.
Learn MoreBronx Junior Photo League student photographers will discuss their work on environmental justice, homelessness, access to healthy foods, LGBTQI+ activism, and more.
Learn MoreA conversation about the attacks on press freedom in Mexico with Alexandra Ellerbeck, Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) North America program coordinator, Mexican photojournalist Emmanuel Guillen Lozano, and Ginger Thompson, senior reporter at ProPublica.
Learn MoreThe Bronx Junior Photo League (BJPL) is a free after-school photography and journalism program serving middle through high school students at the Bronx Documentary Center, a non-profit gallery and educational space in the South Bronx.
Learn MoreStudents from the Bronx Junior Photo League (BJPL) — the Bronx Documentary Center’s after-school documentary photography program — will share the work they created for “Journeys: Immigration Stories,” on view at Photoville.
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