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In this conversation, conducted via Zoom on January 12, 2021, Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera of the Bronx Documentary Center discuss their approach to growing community journalists. Kamber is the Executive Director of the Bronx Documentary Center, co-founded with Danielle Jackson, and Rivera is the Exhibition Coordinator. |
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Truth in Photography: What led you to start the Bronx Documentary Center?
Michael Kamber: I was working overseas for The New York Times. I was covering West Africa and the Middle East, and I basically felt that the values and the things that I had grown up with in terms of the importance of documentary images, the importance of photojournalism—I felt like those things were slipping away and not being passed on. And education was also getting very expensive. I would come back to New York and see how much these things cost. To get a degree in photography was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was brainstorming with my friend Tim Hetherington. We’d both been volunteering in West Africa and mentoring young photographers. And we thought it would be great if there was a non-profit where we could pass on the values and the importance of documentary photography and show that this is really the bedrock of a thriving democracy, and a country that understands its history, that has a record of the past and the present. And if we could do this in a place where it would be free and it would be open to everybody. That was really the genesis of the BDC. Tim was killed in Libya in 2011 covering the war. And myself and some friends got together and just started the place up immediately on some credit cards and a lot of volunteer labor in a storefront.
Michael Kamber: I was working overseas for The New York Times. I was covering West Africa and the Middle East, and I basically felt that the values and the things that I had grown up with in terms of the importance of documentary images, the importance of photojournalism—I felt like those things were slipping away and not being passed on. And education was also getting very expensive. I would come back to New York and see how much these things cost. To get a degree in photography was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was brainstorming with my friend Tim Hetherington. We’d both been volunteering in West Africa and mentoring young photographers. And we thought it would be great if there was a non-profit where we could pass on the values and the importance of documentary photography and show that this is really the bedrock of a thriving democracy, and a country that understands its history, that has a record of the past and the present. And if we could do this in a place where it would be free and it would be open to everybody. That was really the genesis of the BDC. Tim was killed in Libya in 2011 covering the war. And myself and some friends got together and just started the place up immediately on some credit cards and a lot of volunteer labor in a storefront.
TiP: Cynthia, could you talk about your background?
Cynthia Rivera: I do not have as much of an extensive background as both of you, but I came to the BDC seven years ago, maybe almost eight years ago. I was still in college and I volunteered here with a friend, then I interned here, and kind of just stayed. We were really small back then, everybody kind of did everything. And eventually we were able to branch into our own sections of exhibitions and events and education.
TiP: Both of you are photographers. Cynthia, on your website, there's a photograph of yours that you called “missing soldier, missing truth.” Please talk about it.
Rivera: That was creating something that told a truth in terms of what I believed in my head. So it wasn’t necessarily a truth. I read an article of how someone was killed or overdosed on drugs in their dorm on their military base. The image isn’t necessarily truth, it is a recreation of what I imagined in my head after reading the truth in an article. But the visual was my own creation.
Cynthia Rivera: I do not have as much of an extensive background as both of you, but I came to the BDC seven years ago, maybe almost eight years ago. I was still in college and I volunteered here with a friend, then I interned here, and kind of just stayed. We were really small back then, everybody kind of did everything. And eventually we were able to branch into our own sections of exhibitions and events and education.
TiP: Both of you are photographers. Cynthia, on your website, there's a photograph of yours that you called “missing soldier, missing truth.” Please talk about it.
Rivera: That was creating something that told a truth in terms of what I believed in my head. So it wasn’t necessarily a truth. I read an article of how someone was killed or overdosed on drugs in their dorm on their military base. The image isn’t necessarily truth, it is a recreation of what I imagined in my head after reading the truth in an article. But the visual was my own creation.
TiP: There’s a truth in things that are not necessarily real or factual. Because truth is in some sense a construct. It’s something that we believe. For something to be true, we have to believe it to be so. What is truth in photography for you?
Rivera: When I think about truth in photography, I think about something that just happened that is literally in front of you that you’re photographing, something that you happened upon and not something that you recreated. So there is that distinction between photojournalism and me recreating something to photograph.
Kamber: I think that there’s people doing conceptual work and there’s people doing art, and there’s people doing very personal work. Today, increasingly, I’m seeing all this very powerful personal work. It’s different from photojournalism. I’m a traditionalist. God bless the people doing their personal work and their conceptual work. But it’s not what I do, and it’s not really the focus of the BDC. We’re focused on creating an accurate historical record, or as accurate as can be. I think accurate depends on your politics, depends on your background, depends on a lot of things. We try to find a reasonably middle of the road accurate version of events, and try to represent that in a way that we feel is honest.
Rivera: When I think about truth in photography, I think about something that just happened that is literally in front of you that you’re photographing, something that you happened upon and not something that you recreated. So there is that distinction between photojournalism and me recreating something to photograph.
Kamber: I think that there’s people doing conceptual work and there’s people doing art, and there’s people doing very personal work. Today, increasingly, I’m seeing all this very powerful personal work. It’s different from photojournalism. I’m a traditionalist. God bless the people doing their personal work and their conceptual work. But it’s not what I do, and it’s not really the focus of the BDC. We’re focused on creating an accurate historical record, or as accurate as can be. I think accurate depends on your politics, depends on your background, depends on a lot of things. We try to find a reasonably middle of the road accurate version of events, and try to represent that in a way that we feel is honest.
TiP: How does truth relate to evidence?
Kamber: Truth and evidence are obviously closely related, and I think if we’re looking at what happened in the Capitol (on January 6th, 2021), there are photos there that serve a crucial, crucial purpose. I think a lot of what I saw was not interpretative. I think that people were trying to capture and record what went on. And I think those photos, you know, Victor Blue and Ashley Gilbertson, I think they did incredible work there. I think those photos are honest photos, I think they’re truthful, and I think they’re evidence. I don’t know that there was a lot of interpretation going on. I think there’s times for interpretation and there’s times when you don’t need that. Everything is open to debate, more so today than ever. I’m sure there’s people that would look at these photos and say, “Well, you know, that’s an interpretation. He shot it from this angle.” Or, you know, “He chose the guy with the Confederate flag, you know, he could have chosen someone else.” We could go back and forth forever. But I think what we’re interested in is: “this is an honest photograph.” It hasn’t been altered. This is the photographer who took it. This is his point of view. You’re able to see there’s evidence here. We know what happened in the Capitol. We know how people scaled the walls. We know how they stormed the offices. We have that. And of course some of it we have from the participants themselves, which is extraordinary. That’s been the real change over the last ten/fifteen years. It used to be if you wanted to know what was going on somewhere you had to send someone like me halfway around the world. That’s completely superfluous now. I’ve become completely unneeded. We’re getting so much stuff from the people themselves. But we have to know who we’re getting it from and what their point of view is and what their agenda is. It’s like taking photos from China or North Korea. You’ve got to know where that photo’s coming from, and why it’s put out there. I trust Victor Blue because Victor Blue has a 25 year track record of doing accurate documentary work. So you’re going to look at that photo in a very different way than you’re going to look at a selfie from a QAnon conspirator. Those are all parts of the historical record and they’re fascinating. Look, I worked in Iraq for years. The most important photos to come out of the Iraq war were the photos that the prison guards took at Abu Ghraib. No photojournalist did work that was as historically important. Those photos really changed the course of the war. And those were taken by people inside the jails doing selfies with whatever cell phones they had. So there’s an important part for people taking their own photos today, but we’ve got to know what it is.
Kamber: Truth and evidence are obviously closely related, and I think if we’re looking at what happened in the Capitol (on January 6th, 2021), there are photos there that serve a crucial, crucial purpose. I think a lot of what I saw was not interpretative. I think that people were trying to capture and record what went on. And I think those photos, you know, Victor Blue and Ashley Gilbertson, I think they did incredible work there. I think those photos are honest photos, I think they’re truthful, and I think they’re evidence. I don’t know that there was a lot of interpretation going on. I think there’s times for interpretation and there’s times when you don’t need that. Everything is open to debate, more so today than ever. I’m sure there’s people that would look at these photos and say, “Well, you know, that’s an interpretation. He shot it from this angle.” Or, you know, “He chose the guy with the Confederate flag, you know, he could have chosen someone else.” We could go back and forth forever. But I think what we’re interested in is: “this is an honest photograph.” It hasn’t been altered. This is the photographer who took it. This is his point of view. You’re able to see there’s evidence here. We know what happened in the Capitol. We know how people scaled the walls. We know how they stormed the offices. We have that. And of course some of it we have from the participants themselves, which is extraordinary. That’s been the real change over the last ten/fifteen years. It used to be if you wanted to know what was going on somewhere you had to send someone like me halfway around the world. That’s completely superfluous now. I’ve become completely unneeded. We’re getting so much stuff from the people themselves. But we have to know who we’re getting it from and what their point of view is and what their agenda is. It’s like taking photos from China or North Korea. You’ve got to know where that photo’s coming from, and why it’s put out there. I trust Victor Blue because Victor Blue has a 25 year track record of doing accurate documentary work. So you’re going to look at that photo in a very different way than you’re going to look at a selfie from a QAnon conspirator. Those are all parts of the historical record and they’re fascinating. Look, I worked in Iraq for years. The most important photos to come out of the Iraq war were the photos that the prison guards took at Abu Ghraib. No photojournalist did work that was as historically important. Those photos really changed the course of the war. And those were taken by people inside the jails doing selfies with whatever cell phones they had. So there’s an important part for people taking their own photos today, but we’ve got to know what it is.
Abu Ghraib photographs
TiP: What about the idea of citizen journalism, because you are working in a community? What is citizen journalism in your world?
Kamber: We’ve got dozens and dozens of people, hundreds of people out photographing the Bronx and disseminating those images. Including for The New York Times, for The Wall Street Journal, for The Guardian, for the BBC.
Kamber: We’ve got dozens and dozens of people, hundreds of people out photographing the Bronx and disseminating those images. Including for The New York Times, for The Wall Street Journal, for The Guardian, for the BBC.
We’ve got Bronx people telling Bronx stories, which is something we’re proud of. But I think the danger is also that sometimes people from the community feel pressure to do propaganda. Like we’re only going to show positive images, you know. So there’s a balance to it. We try to train people and collaborate with people to tell a good solid balanced story of the Bronx. The Bronx is amazing, but it has a lot of challenges as well. Where do you find the right midpoint? These are judgment calls. I can’t give you an exact point.
We found when we opened the BDC, people from the community told us immediately, “We don’t want to see depressing photos all the time. We don’t want to see the Bronx depicted full of drugs and despair. We live it everyday. We don’t need to come here and see an exhibition about how bad things are.” There’s all kinds of interesting points between doing things that are accurate and honest, and doing things that are propaganda. Finding the right level is crucial, and I can’t always do that. Nobody can always do that. |
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