Love, Family and Change in Brooklyn

It does not matter how much money one has or what their color of their skin is; everyone is all the same. Everyone deals with similar things in life, and everyone has similar things in their life, such as family, love, youth, work, and culture. This is what Russell Frederick has captured in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Frederick has been shooting in this part of town since 1999. He was intrigued to begin photographing because when he "told people where [he] lived, they would cringe as if Bed-Stuy was this place where [he] had to wear a helmet and a bulletproof vest." This was actually the complete opposite.

Many individuals have seen images of the "robberies, shootings and acts of violence in Bed-Stuy," but many have not seen images about all of the positive things in this neighborhood in Brooklyn, like the diversity and the good people. Aside from this there are also changes occurring in the community with rising rent prices and "cast-iron streetlights." You have a lot more "white folk" and "more people are getting involved in the community." A lot of things are changing in Bed-Stuy and some long-lived residents are in opposition to these drastic changes. Russell Frederick wanted to capture where he used to live and did so wonderfully shooting with medium format and 35mm and made his own prints.

The image that really stood out to me was the initial image, a medium format image of a shirtless man with intriguing tattoos and hair extensions. This image was "Summer 2006: Supa Nova Slom, a rapper, author and community activist, shows off his tribute to Egyptian ancestors. Fulton Street." This exposure captures a wide variety of aspects of Bed-Stuy from the way the buildings are and how they are maintained, to what kind of culture embodies this neighborhood. There is a poster in the image that says "I See Black People;" this poster in this particular photograph can be playing on the irony between Bed-Stuy and the stereotypes that go along with the neighborhood.

This series as a whole cannot be contained in one photograph. There are so many different aspects of life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, so many different types of people. The more 'rougher' crowd as seen with "Cas," and the older crowd that has been there for more than forty years as seen with "Mr. and Mrs. Pritchett." I really enjoyed the use of black and white film to create a softer image for such a stereotypically 'harsh' neighborhood. Each and every image seems inviting and welcoming in some way, inviting outsiders into their world and their perspective. Each individual from Bed-Stuy displayed in these photographs has their own sense of style, their own sense of worth. They're proud of their neighborhood and where they live and they want the world to see that.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/love-family-and-change-in-brooklyn/