The bronx river
Roy Baizan | United States
I grew up along the Bronx River, skipping school to hide away there or skate with my little brothers. During the pandemic, walks along the river were my escape. As I reflected about how the river has provided me shelter, I felt aligned with the people before me who have also sought out shelter, who have worked and lived alongside the river. I became fixated on the history of development, colonization, and industrialization, and began to see a pattern. I started to see a wave of new construction.
For over 400 years the Bronx River has experienced many changes. Once called the “Aquehung River,” it served the Lenape as a means of shelter, food, and spirituality. European colonization in the 1600’s set in motion the river’s transformation into an eventual dumping ground, as companies spewed their toxic sewage throughout the industrialization and urbanization that followed. In the 1970’s a new movement for environmental preservation began an urgency to preserve this 23 mile fresh water river and the access to it.
In this project, I photograph the changes and developments along the river, and the work of local community members and nonprofits to restore it. Using the New York Public Library digital archives, old newspapers, and books, I map the developments along the waterway. As I continue to document the journey of organizations like the Bronx River Alliance and others in creating solutions to reverse structural and systematic violence, I will also speak to other local organizers and community members that use the park about their initiatives and the kind of future they imagine for the river. I envision the final form of this project as a set of banners installed along the river where I will also conduct photo-based workshops that merge photography and foraging in the park's foodway. The aim of this series of workshops is to further community engagement by highlighting efforts to revitalize our green spaces and the importance of protecting them.
“Social justice is to create solutions that best serve the community. To deconstruct the oppressive systems that affect our communities. I think my understanding of social justice has expanded and photography became even a bigger part of it. The process of making images could be used to build community, to hold systems accountable, and much more.”
