The Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) is a non-profit gallery and educational space. Through exhibitions, screenings, and public programming, we show the work of internationally-renowned and emerging photographers and filmmakers who are dealing with the themes that guide the BDC: justice, education, community-building, and positive social change. We also provide free education programs for middle and high school students as well as professional education workshops for historically underrepresented adult Bronx-based photographers that provide opportunities for professional development and skills training in photojournalism, filmmaking and documentary photography.
Our free after-school and summer documentary photography programs teach middle and high school students from the Bronx to use photography, writing, and research to explore social justice issues, preparing them for college and future careers. The program includes visits from internationally renowned photographers, field trips to major cultural institutions and media outlets, and opportunities for life-changing national and international travel. BDC Youth Photo League students and their families also participate in extensive college prep programming, which includes one-on-one counseling, financial aid workshops, and college tours. All materials are provided by the BDC.
Everyday Bronx is an exhibition based on the popular Instagram account, which celebrates the daily life and beauty of The Bronx.
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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.
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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“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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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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