Overtown, Miami, 1992. Portrait of sisters outside their apartment in a housing complex in one of The City’s oldest Black communities. Called “Colored Town” in The Jim Crow South because it was the only place Black residents were allowed to live. Overtown became the heart of Miami’s Black Community, with thriving Black-owned businesses. When great Black artists like Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole traveled to perform in clubs on Miami Beach, the Beach hotels were segregated, and these legendary performers traveled across the causeway to stay in Overtown. The housing and municipal infrastructure has traditionally remained marginalized, and in the 1960s, urban renewal literally put a freeway through Overtown, thus physically passing over the neighborhood and perpetuating layers of segregation that remain today. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Miami, Florida, 1995. In 1993, Frosene Michaels Sonderling was named Philanthropist of The Year by The local Miami Chapter of The National Society of Fundraising Executives. Sonderling gave an annual Christmas Party for children and charity for which she and her household staff dressed Sanderling’s 200 plus doll collection in preparation for the party. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Miami, Florida, 1993. Paris Leeds Dorfman ready to be served tea in the garden of her parents' home. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Miami, Florida, South Beach, 1990. A patron and her talking bunny at Jessie’s Dollhouse Bar on Washington Avenue in Pre-Gentrified South Beach. Jessie’s, like all the other neighborhood bars that thrived from the 1970s to the 1990s, have been closed. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Miami, Florida, 1992. Club Kid Brett Love was a regular presence at nightclubs and happenings all around Miami in the 1990s, including the legendary Warsaw Ballroom on South Beach. The Warsaw closed in 2012. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Miami, Florida, 1992. The artist, collector, and patron Sheila Natasha Simrod Friedman with selections from her sprawling collection of sequin banners from Haiti. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, 1999. Children play in one of the many abandoned empty lots on Dodworth Street. Gentrification began to sweep the neighborhood in 2006, and the house in the background has been rebuilt and sold as triple-stack condos for over one million dollars per unit. All of the residents in this neighborhood have been priced out, and essentially, the community as we knew it has vanished. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2000. A crack-addicted mother sneaks a hit from her stem while her toddler daughter naps in her arms. Pre-gentrified Bushwick had become one of the poorest neighborhoods in Brooklyn and ripe for the crack era addiction and desperation that intersected with other problems in the low-status neighborhood. By 2010, Bushwick had become one of the most expensive places to live in the USA and internationally synonymous with all things hip and trendy. None of the community households from the 1990s remain on the Dodworth Street block where this picture was made. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2000. A woman bathes in an abandoned building on Dodworth Street the day she was released from jail on a drug charge. She was caught smoking crack in a drug spot as part of a regular neighborhood police sweep. The Rockefeller drug laws enacted in 1973 converged with the devastation of the 1980s crack epidemic to wipe out entire poor black and brown families. By the late 1990s, women were particularly hard hit with the addition of gender stigma from the law and society. Women who became addicted and jailed were often cast off by their children and partners in ways that male addicts were not. This reinforced the cycle of addiction in women addicts. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2000. Moya and Tara met in jail while serving time for drug possession. The two met when back out on the streets and resumed their jailhouse love affair and soon their addictions. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bedford Hills Jail, Westchester Hospital. Moya became pregnant while on the streets of Bushwick and gave birth while in prison serving time for a drug charge. She delivered her baby while her feet were shackled. Most states have since banned the use of shackles when inmates are delivering. The practice is not universally banned and is still in use in some states despite loud medical and ethical concerns. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2006. Katie, four years old the day she moved into her new apartment following a series of evictions and family and friends couch surfing with her mother and three siblings. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2010. Kayla and Her Girlfriend Chantel. Kayla’s North Troy neighborhood is the low-income housing stock for many of the community's single mothers. Kayla gave birth to her son when she was fourteen, and Kayla’s mother had her first child when she was fourteen. Single mothers and children live with the highest poverty rates in the United States. Kayla and her mother were in both demographics. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2013. Chantelle after her mother died from cancer. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2021. Chantelle was raised in juvenile placement after her birth mother was sent to prison for drug possession, and Chantelle’s Aunt became unable to make Chantelle comply with school behavior and attendance. Chantelle used to say she had two mothers. When the second of Chantelle’s two mothers died, Chantelle became distraught and expressed her despair in a mock suicide gesture using the video game shooter controls and her habitual marijuana intake to illustrate her emotional state and sum up gaming and weed as the go-to relief regularly accessed by the entire neighborhood. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2014. An ex-girlfriend of Kayla’s younger brother drowns her sorrow in alcohol during a party at Kayla’s apartment. Love is a powerful place to go when economics prohibit other recreation and escapes, and the weight means break-ups are particularly devastating. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2020. Jody and her daughter Patrice share a healing moment of prayer over a cyst on Jody’s breast that, before Covid, would be routinely drained during a doctor's visit. Lockdown has made the process almost impossible for Jody. A procedure that took an hour pre-Covid now requires a long wait, and Jody’s poor health makes this challenging. The mother and daughter pray and try to care for the wound on their own until arrangements can be made for her to see the doctor without exhausting wait times. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2019. Billie Jean and her son Dasaun hold Billie Jean’s mother Rosanne’s crematory ashes in front of the wall where, after five years of saving from her disability checks, Billie Jean finally was able to purchase a mausoleum vault that would hold the sacred remains. In a community where there are few material comforts, the loss of family, even with fraught interactions, is devastating. Billie Jean has carried Rosanne’s ashes to every family event since her death, including Dasaun’s 18th Birthday and his high school graduation. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2014. Kayla’s younger sister Kandice moved into Kayla’s old bedroom when she gave birth to her son. Kayla and her son then moved to a converted efficiency apartment upstairs in the family home. This room is the place that Kayla brought her newborn son home to when mother and child were released from the hospital after Kayla gave birth. In North Troy, multigenerational/extended households are the only safety net against homelessness or a shelter. Older children almost never leave because education, employment, and general health challenges make the path to sustainable income impossible. Factor in inflation and technology, and low-income families have no chance for upward or even lateral mobility. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2019. Kandice and her youngest son in their room in a newly painted room in the basement of their family home. When Kandice married and had a second child, they outgrew the bedroom that Kayla had passed down to her, so the couple and their two children took over a partitioned space in the basement of the house. On average, ten people plus children share one bathroom on the main floor of the house. The basement has no bathroom or facilities. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2014. Big Jessie celebrates her daughter’s first birthday. Jessie had always loved children but struggled in her teens, eventually serving time in jail for a fire she accidentally set in an abandoned house in the neighborhood. She served almost a year after never having been in any kind of trouble with the law. She was then unable to get a job at a daycare facility, which had been a goal. She met a cousin of her sister’s husband, and a year later, gave birth to her daughter Londyn. Jessie was dedicated to breastfeeding and was the first in her family to go a whole year. Londyn is Big Jessie's whole world. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2009. Roseanne, a friend of the Stocklas family who owns the house, moved into part of the basement in exchange for helping with household chores and child care. When Roseanne’s daughter Michelle went into rehab to kick her drug habit, she became pregnant and needed support once she was back on the street with her baby. Though she had an apartment through a program, Michelle and the baby would often stay in the basement apartment to be near Roseanne. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2020. Jackie Marie and her Jaylynne hold a heart-shaped bottle with Jaylynne’s father’s crematory ashes. Jaylynne calls the ashes her "daddy." The young man was shot to death in the neighborhood while Jackie Marie was still pregnant, so the ashes are the only daddy that Jaylynne has ever known. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Barbara and her daughter Amber in their room at the homeless shelter where they were sent to live the day before the moratorium on evictions took effect in New York State. The aging family shelter, already a challenge to live in even before COVID, became unbearable during the pandemic, with any pathway to housing or transitioning out at a standstill during lockdown. Filthy mattresses and no internet for children to do remote school work, and a price tag starting at $1000 per month that families were charged from their disability or welfare benefits, making it impossible to leave. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Barbara’s storage unit, Troy, New York. April 8, 2020. The kids wanted to retrieve some personal items to take to the shelter. Amber cried while her brother and sister searched for the unicorn that Amber said would “calm her down.” ©Brenda Ann Kenneally/VII
Troy, New York, 2019. Aziah on the evening before she has to leave her little sisters after an alternate weekend visit. Shared custody is still one of the most difficult situations for North Troy families. Kids from households already faced with scarcity and uncertainty have the added challenge of juggling homes and parents. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2019. Ellie at Dunkin' Donuts. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2021. Ellie Pooh in the Wynantskill Creek. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Troy, New York, 2020. Deb Stocklas is an institution in her North Troy neighborhood. She has raised nine children, four grandchildren, several nieces and nephews, and countless kids from her community, who either fell in love and moved in with one of her eight or fell out of love and needed a place to stay after the break-up, or who, by way of death, disease, or eviction, became in need and made their way to Deb's couch and into someone's bedroom quarters. Once most of the kids under her roof were old enough to take care of themselves, Deb started raising chickens that were sold at the local tractor supply. She used their eggs for breakfast on the weekend, one of the few luxuries in a life of grinding hourly wage work. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Las Vegas, Nevada, 2010. Lady Goon at the Casino inside Western Hotel off Fremont Street. Once home to the Rat Pack and penny slot machines, the old end of Vegas was usurped by the mega palaces of the Bellagio and MGM on the strip, and the efficiency motels near Fremont succumbed to the needs of the down-on-their-luck and addicted. The Western, once the everyman’s gambling palace, was bought by Zappos founder Tony Hsieh and closed for good, ending an era. That end of Fremont has followed a gentrification pattern seen in other major cities and is now the village of creatives and hipster types who represent the current idea-based economy. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Bombay Beach, California, 2022. Shorty and Lisa live in a town on the Salton Sea that was built around a man-made body of water sourced from the Colorado River. A tourist destination with fishing and water sports, the small trailer community was a paradise for families and retired snowbirds in winter. Environmental runoff from the surrounding agricultural communities and the need for water in more affluent communities with higher tax bases rerouted the water from Bombay, which is part of Niland, the most economically challenged zip code in California. In 2017, there began an effort by artists from nearby cities to make Bombay a venue for arts and performance festivals. Shorty and Lisa are long-time residents who fit into the category of “locals” when distinguishing between those who stay in Bombay year-round and those with means who have the option to leave when the temperatures, June through September, average 110. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Menands, New York, 2020. A mother feeds her children on the bathroom floor in their room at The Schuyler Inn Homeless Shelter. During the first month of Covid lockdown, there were no masks or places for social distancing in congregate facilities like shelters. The Inn closed its dining room, and there were no tables in rooms, as food privileges in individual quarters had been suspended years earlier to prevent the constant infestations of roaches. The bathroom floor seemed to be the only place with a surface that could be sanitized. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Utica, New York, 2020. Miriam, a long-time resident of a low-income housing property, carries a plate of macaroni and cheese she made for her neighbor who was ill during the early months of the pandemic lockdown. © Brenda Ann Kenneally.
Location
New York, NY & Bombay Beach, CA, USA

Brenda Ann Kenneally

Contributing Photographer

Brenda Ann Kenneally is a mother, multi platform documentary worker, Guggenheim Fellow, and retired carnival snake charmer, whose lived experiences of poverty and incarceration in her youth, have been the driving force behind her documentary mission. Over the past thirty years Kenneally’s long-form, immersive collaborations with families who struggle to survive where social, economic, and emotional marginalization intersect with the American Criminal Legal System have produced visceral portraits of the landscape of intergenerational inequity and trauma navigated by the most vulnerable among us.

Kenneally’s books “Money Power Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood” (Chanel Photographics, 2004) and “Upstate Girls: Unraveling Collar City” (Regan Arts, 2018) covered decades in the lives of children in each of these neighborhoods where Kenneally and her son lived. The shared experiences of life on these blocks became the foundation for an array of participatory public art projects with those communities.

In 2017, Kenneally founded A Little Creative Class Inc., a 501c3 with a vision to support young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods on their journey to discover artistic voice and authentic self. The culmination of Kenneally’s commitments came in the summer of 2021. Kenneally and a contingent of The Upstate Girls’ extended documentary family embarked on an awe-inspiring cross-country road trip to the American West. “If my own work doesn’t devastate me into action, then I have no business doing it,” she said. “It became clear as second and third generations came of age that I had to change what the last picture in our historic time together could be.”

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