Bronx Photographs

Visual Art by Melissa Smyth

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Melissa Smyth is currently a graduate student at UT Austin, where she studies photographic representation in Middle East-related media. She works as an Associate Editor for Warscapes magazine, where she is also a contributing writer. After studying photography at Fordham University, she continues to practice independently, using the camera primarily as a tool for exploring the living compositions of places.

These photographs come from a collection titled No Grand Design, made in 2012 and 2013 as part of a senior thesis project. Made on Kodak Tri-X 4x5” film with a Toyo-view field camera, the photographs show some of the transient beauty that composes so much of the Bronx—the confluence of transformed spaces, layered traces of life, and ever-changing shadows cast by the ever-exuberant sunlight upon planned and unplanned structures. This project does not and cannot represent or summarize the borough; rather, it describes pieces of its complexity and vibrancy, representing the moments of pause that made up my experience of walking up, around, and through its streets.

Journal of Writing & Environment

Bronx 1

Bronx 2