A year after Eric Garner was killed by a police officer who placed him in a chokehold, a cloud of anger and impatience still hangs over the streets of Tompkinsville, Staten Island.
The photographer Gareth Smit, drawn by what he said was a “trauma” that reminded him of his experience growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, returned to those streets with his camera again and again. Over a period of five months, he earned the trust of Mr. Garner’s friends and relatives.
Mr. Smit’s photographs tell two stories. One captures the ordinary lives of black Staten Island residents in the kind of images that are often overshadowed by the popular perception of the borough as overwhelmingly white. The other involves the varied ways that the people who live in the neighborhood mourn Mr. Garner’s death. Some march. Some sing. Some look after the plastic box that marks the spot where he was wrestled to the ground.
One Year Later, Remembering Eric Garner
Eric Garner’s death a year ago set off protests against the New York Police Department. A young South African photographer documented Mr. Garner’s family and their Staten Island community.
Image Credit Video: Gareth SmitMr. Smit was present when Mr. Garner’s 1-year-old daughter, Legacy, and her mother, Jewel Miller, attended a court hearing in support of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the fatal confrontation with the police. He visited Ms. Miller’s family in her Tompkinsville duplex, where three generations doted on Legacy.
While some of Mr. Garner’s relatives have left Staten Island, most of his friends remain. For them, his death was a public retelling of the racism that they say plagues Tompkinsville, their own nightmare caught on video to be replayed over and over.
Some have called this the post-Garner era for New York City, referring to the push for police reforms his death helped spawn. In Tompkinsville, that moment — the chokehold, the limp body, the crush of officers — has yet to fade.
Gareth Smit is an independent visual storyteller currently based in New York. Born in Heidelberg, South Africa, he began his career as a freelance photographer at Independent Newspapers in Cape Town. Smit is a recent alumnus of the International Center of Photography, which he attended through the support of a fellowship from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Alan L. Model Scholarship from ICP.
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An earlier version of a picture caption in the slide show misspelled Mr. Garner's given name. He was, of course, Eric, not Erica.
