Stephen Shames: Bronx Boys

Artist’s Statement:

The Bronx has a terrible beauty stark and harsh like the dessert. At first glance you imagine nothing can survive. Then you notice life going on all around. People adapt, survive, and even prosper in this urban moonscape of quick pleasures and false hopes.

In the 1700s Thomas Hobbes described life in a state of nature as continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Life is still that way in The Bronx.

I took my first photos, at John Durniak’s request, for Look Magazine in 1977. Look died while I was on assignment. I continued for two decades, sometimes staying on the block for weeks at a time, sometimes visiting only once or twice a year.

These are pictures of friends I met as children who became my family, as well as, people who stepped in front of my camera once and disappeared forever. I watched my friends grow up, fall in love, have children of their own. The boys in the original “crews” are now in their forties their children are becoming adults. A few, including my two Godsons, have made it; many others are dead or in jail.

Often I am terrified of The Bronx. Other times it feels like home. My images reflect the feral vitality and hope of these young men. The interplay between good and evil; violence and love; chaos and family are the themes but this is not a documentation. There is no “story line.” There is only a feeling.

Note: The University of Texas Press is publishing Bronx Boys in October, 2014.
Bronx Boys will be exhibited at the Steven Kasher Gallery in November.

Artist’s Bio:

Brooklyn, NY

Stephen Shames is the author of eight monographs: Bronx Boys (University of Texas); Outside the Dream, Pursuing the Dream, The Black Panthers (Aperture), Bronx Boys (FotoEvidence e-book) Facing Race (Moravian College), Transforming Lives (Star Bright Books), and Free to Grow (Columbia Univ.). A new, expanded Black Panther book, co-authored with Bobby Seale will be published in 2016 by Abrams.

Shames’ photographs are in the permanent collections of: National Portrait Gallery; International Center of Photography; The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN; San Jose Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Ford Foundation; Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Baruch College; Oakland Museum; University Art Museum, Berkeley, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Elton John Foundation; Vancouver Art Gallery.

Shames is represented by Steven Kasher. His two solo shows at the Steven Kasher Gallery, NYC were reviewed by The New Yorker. American Photo named Steve one of the 15 Most Underrated Photographers. PBS named Hine, Wolcott, and Shames as photographers whose work promotes social change.

About Shames’ work:
“My photographs show youth on the edge: young people embracing life in a world of menace and danger. My work concerns peril and sensuality.Chaos and joy. Life amidst death.

I try to convey pure emotion. My goal is to capture private, inner moments where things are ambiguous, less rational. These images explore our concealed fears and hopes. They investigate the boundaries of the ordinary: the edges of experience, the place where public meets personal. Though seemingly based on reality, my pictures are dreams.

My photographs show youth on the edge: young people embracing life in a world of menace and danger. My work concerns peril and sensuality.Chaos and joy. Life amidst death.