Sometimes the assumptions we have made of a place and the people that live there can hold us back from going there and getting to know that place for what it really is. This, unfortunately, is what happens with New York City’s Bronx borough - it is often viewed by outsiders as nothing but an unsafe place. Having always lived in the Bronx, I know that this is not true. In Scenes of the Bronx, my goal is to expose a normal life in the borough that is often unexplored by those that do not live there. I want to capture the landscape of diversity in the Bronx, portray people in in a way that is honest and unstaged, and make my audience question their perceptions of the Bronx.
Emma Kagan is a first generation Russian-American New York City based photographer that currently resides in the Bronx. She is a freshman at the Beacon School where she pursues art and photography within her curriculum. In addition to photography she is an illustrator, designer and filmmaker. Her work is based upon the idea of representing places that otherwise remain underepresented in mainstream media.