Photo: © Ricky Flores
Photo: © Ricky Flores
The South Bronx became infamous during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, when newscaster Howard Cosell noticed a nearby abandoned school engulfed in flames and not a fire truck in sight, uttering his legendary phrase, “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”
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The Bronx had been burning throughout the 70s, in a massive series of fires set by arsonists working on behalf of landlords who knew they could collect more money from insurance fraud than they could from rent. From 1970 to 1980, more than 97 per cent of seven census tracts in the South Bronx had been lost to fire and abandonment, turning the once majestic neighborhood into blocks of rubble resembling a war zone. Yet, through it all, the people of the Bronx persevered.
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The era was ruled by the do-it-yourself ethos, because under a governmental policy of “benign neglect” (systemic racism that denied basic services to Black and Latinx neighborhoods), it was understood if you didn’t do it, no one would. Hip hop was born out of the fires, the poverty, and the despair, as a new generation of youth invented a brand new art form using nothing but pure ingenuity.
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South Bronx native Ricky Flores began taking photographs as a high school senior in high school in 1980, shooting pictures of his friends and his neighborhood. His photographs capture the South Bronx as it was, a place filled with beauty amidst the rubble. He began studying with Mel Rosenthal, one of the most renowned photographers of the South Bronx, and realized he had a responsibility to document his community as an insider.
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While outsiders, working for the mainstream media or Hollywood, would come in and create an image of the Bronx as the worst borough in New York City, Flores photographed the community as he knew them to be: a warm, creative, dynamic, resilient, and strong. Flores gives Dazed an inside look at growing up in the South Bronx.
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Photo: © Ricky Flores
Photo: © Ricky Flores