submitted by Sarah Stumbar
About the series:
“From August through December 2013, as part of a social medicine project I met with a group of four teenage girls in the third-floor conference room of a Bronx family health center. Over healthy snacks we discussed topics relevant to growing up as a girl in this Bronx community: obesity, violence, exercise, access to green spaces, relationships, body image and sexuality–complex issues which gave them an opportunity to voice their dreams for themselves and their community. Each girl was given a disposable camera and asked to take photographs of her neighborhood. This photograph is one of these. The collective voice of these young women teaches us that, even in deserted streets and playgrounds, they are able to find beauty and hope. They remind us of the importance of giving all young people a voice as a way of fostering their growth and resiliency.”
About the artwork:
“Deserted streets can sometimes feel dangerous and lonely to me,” the photographer said. “This is close to where I live. It makes me remember the time we heard gunshots from our apartment, and my mom made us hide on the floor.”
About Sarah Stumbar:
Sarah Eisenstein Stumbar is an assistant professor of family medicine at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University. She is a graduate of the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and completed this project during her time there. “I believe strongly in the ability of public art to give a voice to those from marginalized communities, including the young female patients of a north-central Bronx clinic who submitted photographs like the one above.”
Visual Editor’s note:
The teenage photographers gave Sarah Stumbar permission to use their arresting pictures as part of her project. Unfortunately, we were unable to contact the young women to ask them if we might print their names. We believe that their voices, even without names, are too important to ignore. This is the final photo in this series.
Visual Editor:
Justin Sanders
