South Bronx, '80s, from Photographer Steven Siegel

Siegel is another well-known photographer who documented the look of the South Bronx in the eighties. I'm not sure of the provenance of this photo.

 

This is the source of the one below. 

Bronx Photos

Some great photos of the South Bronx here, dating from the early hip-hop era.

Here's hip-hop pioneers the Cold Crush Brothers.

And here are the Cold Crush Brothers from the film Wildstyle. That's the Puerto Rican Charlie Chase you see on the deck, right at the beginning.

Robert Moses and the destruction of the Bronx

You can access the entire episode by renting it from Amazon.

More photos of the South Bronx, early '80s

The desolate landscape of hip-hop's ground zero. If you ever get discouraged, just look at these photos and imagine that one of the most vibrant cultural movements of the twentieth century was invented here. Check out the slideshow of Ray Mortenson's South Bronx photos, courtesy the New York Times. At left is one of them.

Birthplace of the Hip-Hop Revolution: The South Bronx

Photographs (and descriptions) from Mel Rosenthal's In the South Bronx of America, courtesy Duke University Libraries. See the full exhibit here.

I was born and grew up in what is now called the South Bronx. After twenty years away, I returned in 1975, to a neighborhood in ruins. The sturdy well-constructed buildings that had once housed tens of thousands of people were gutted and burned out.

The last building left standing in the neighborhood was on the East 173rd through 174th Street block. A few days after this picture was made, the building was bulldozed and the people who lived there were sent to shelters and single room occupancy hotels.

And here are some vivid images of the South Bronx, from the opening to the 1981 film, Wolfen.