Part of what makes John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’s show Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits” at the Bronx Museum) so remarkable is that it reminds you of two things that made New York City, predevelopment, so remarkable: chance and faith. Back in 1961, Jane Jacobs, in her prescient study The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” argued that urban planning—highways, high-rises, and malls—came at a terrible price. By obliterating communities, you obliterated all that they fostered: the happy accidents and impromptu encounters that could lead to an exchange of ideas that might expand your understanding of both the individual and the community as a whole. Ahearn, who makes plaster-cast sculptures of Black and Hispanic people he has known and admired in the four decades that he’s worked in the South Bronx, captures some of what Jacobs celebrated: the intelligence that goes into not only surviving the streets but making them feel like home. For Ahearn, God is in the people.
This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
