History

In conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at Bedford Library, you're invited to join historian Elke Weesjes for an evening of engaging talks revolving around the history of Bedford-Stuyvesant and the community mural movement. Featuring special guest speakers Janet Braun-Reinitz and Rochelle Shicof
"A Neighborhood in Transition - Murals in Bedford-Stuyvesant", which combines image and text, was inspired by the book, Do Not Give Way to Evil: Photographs of the South Bronx, 1979.  Through a number of essays and stunning photographs by Lisa Kahane, this book documents the devastation and rejuvenation of the South Bronx.  Fascinated by the powerful combination of word and image, I wanted to do a similar project in my own neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Through images of murals in Bedford-Stuyvesant, this exhibition examines the transition of this infamous Brooklyn neighborhood. Visitors are taken on a historical and visual journey from Bed-Stuy's dark days characterized by poverty, racial tensions, violence and the slogan, "Do or Die Bed-Stuy," to a new dawn defined by restoration, community building and the brand new slogan: "Bed-Stuy and Proud of It!"""

Last year Frank Dikötter won the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson prize for his book ‘Mao’s Great Famine’. The jury was impressed yet stunned that they didn’t know the full scale of the atrocities committed during the Great Leap Forward. Dikötter knocks Mao off his pedestal and reveals what he really was; a brutal and violent dictator. After the publication of his book the author received daily hate mail for over a year. In our interview he explains how his opponents’ arguments are the same used to deny the Holocaust.

We are all familiar with photographs of death. From Margaret Bourke-White’s coverage of Nazi concentration camps and Eddie Adam’s world famous image of General Loan shooting a Viet Cong soldier in the head, to the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year, depicting the bodies of two children carried by their uncles to a mosque for their funeral in Gaza City. Photography immortalizes places, people and events. It celebrates life and commemorates death.