DAVID GONZALEZ | "The Dancers" Mott Haven | 12" x 15" Framed

"The Dancers"

12" x 15" Framed

Mott Haven, 1979

"I took this photo a few months after graduating from Yale, while working at En Foco in The Bronx. I had gone to a street fair in Mott Haven - not far from where I was born - and spotted this couple dressed to the nines, embracing and dancing to a Salsa band. I squeezed off a few frames - and then I forgot about it for 30 years. It was only in 2009, as I was preparing a cover story for the Times' Metropolitan section, that I discovered it and decided to include the image. The reaction was swift, and the image has become my best-known photo. Given what had been happening in the South Bronx during those years, the image represents to me the power of culture to get our communities through the worst of times."