The BDC
Founded in 2011, the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) is the result of Michael Kamber and his friend Tim's dream to create a space that blends education and photography. After the death of the latter, Kamber and supporters opened the doors on Courtlandt Avenue.
The center -- which puts on 25-40 exhibititions a year, along with multiple documentary screenings, program-specific events, as well as their two afterschool youth-programs -- has become a cultural and educational haven for the South Bronx, and even more so for the Melrose neighborhood. Often listed as one of the go-to places of its kind in the greater New York-area, Kamber believes that, "[the diversity that you see at our events] speaks to how we’re different from other cultural spaces in New York City, which I think tend to be overwhelmingly white."
When talking about the community that the BDC creates for the Melrose area, he explained the following mremory: "We have a free [photography] class every Friday night … and the instructor was half an hour late last week [but] the students didn’t even miss a beat. They were all looking at each other’s photos, they were all talking, exchanging ideas, teaching each other camera techniques. They didn’t even seem to notice that the instructor was half an hour late, you know? That was cool, it was sort of that’s the way it is [at the BDC]. [It's] not a bunch of people sitting in chairs waiting for the teacher, it’s a community of people that are working on stuff together.” Kamber believes that the true way to promote change in an area is to educate and support the youth, because they are the leaders of tomorrow.
While other forms of support are also in demand, if the youth of a community feel as though they are in an area where they can garner self-worth, success on a larger scale, or in general feel as though they are a part of something positive, then it is likely that they will remain within those borders, rather than leaving to find those expectations elsewhere.
In addition to the classes that they offer, which allow participants to explore the arts in a safe, supportive environment, the BDC's collaborative efforts, often undertaken in the interest of social change, are an important part of their presence in the Melrose community. Kamber explains that, "generally ... it is focused on ... ending unfair drug laws, or you know we do a yearly gentrification conference, [and] we collaborated with I think eleven other organizations for that. We did ... a day of workshops on zoning, on tenants rights, on home-ownership, on careers in urban planning ... just all kinds of different stuff.”