ivysion

“Brick City,” is a week long documentary series that aired last week on the Sundance Channel.  The series, which was executive produced by Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker, focuses on the trials and tribulations of Newark, N.J. as it struggles to overcome its battles with murder, drugs, gang violence and poverty.

The scenes which play out in the documentary are all too familiar to me as a photographer.  During my time as a freelancer for the New York Times, it seems as though I was getting at least one call a week to rush to Newark, or one of the surrounding areas, to cover yet another murder.  Like many of the country’s urban areas, Newark is a beautiful city, with beautiful people whose town and culture are given bad reputations by a few bad apples.  I come from such a city, perhaps the worst urban area in the U.S., E. St. Louis, IL.  I’m proud to be from E. St. Louis, which is also the hometown of such notables as jazz legend Miles Davis,  Olympic Gold Medalist, Jackie Joyner Kersee, NFL Hall of Fame player Kellen Winslow, Sr. and dance legend Katherine Dunham.

One scene in part one of, “Brick City,“  is that of one of several murders in the Summer of 2008. As the film crew interviews a local politician, a man interrupts them and begins a bruising admonishment to the crew to, “get the (expletive) out of here.“  He further displays his disgust by complaining that the media only comes around to such areas when something bad happens.  “Go out and show black people having a good time.“ he tells the crew.

As an African-American photographer who has covered a lot of issues dealing with crime, poverty and other ills in society, I have to agree with this citizen.  Too many times I’ve seen my colleagues show up to try to capture dramatic images of pain and suffering, for their own gratification.  Such images are the ones that regularly win clip and news photo contests.  Throughout my career, I’ve tried to document lives and issues of people, cultures and communities, in an effort to bring attention to the core substances of their lives. I  made a conscious decision to no longer cover yet another murder scene in the inner city.  It’s not just enough to show up on the scene to capture images of crying relatives, whose loved one has just been made another statistic at the hands of violence.  Rather, I feel it’s important to show the issues surrounding people’s lives that would lead them to commit such acts.  I’m still naïve enough to believe that proper communication between varying segments of society can lead to better understandings of how we live and what concerns us.

When I decided to become a photographer when I was 18 years old, I was somewhat apprehensive because I didn’t know of any accomplished black photographers.  I foolishly thought that, maybe being a black photographer isn’t what I should do, because no-one had done it before.  That was before I’d learned of the celebrated works of Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Moneta Sleet Jr., James VanDerZee, Chester Higgins Jr.,  and Michel DuCille, just to name a few.  In hindsight, I realize that my apprehensiveness was merely a result of youthful ignorance.  However, it is evidence of the importance of learning your cultural history. I not only learned that these were accomplished African-American photographers, but that their work was effective in communicating stories and issues in ways that sparked social movement.  I’ve always tried to accomplish the same results with my own work.

The documentary was filmed during 2008, but Newark, like other cities, continues to fight its battles with crime.  The Summer of 2009 saw new waves of violence and murders which targeted both young and older residents, many of whom were innocent bystanders.  Citizens who were frustrated with the violence, formed a coalition and began a series of protests around the city.  The slide show above includes a few images from those protests, along with some of the issues of crime in the city that I’ve covered over the past few years.  I’ve been fortunate to connect with some good people in Newark and will turn my lens on attempting to tell their stories beyond the headlines.