Photograph by Amy Touchette

Image Title: Personal Ties, No. 42

Paper Dimensions (H x W): 16x16

Image Dimensions (H x W): 15x15

Year Created: 2016

Edition 2 of 3

Signed on verso, top left

Image Description: from the series Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn:

IN MEMORY OF "SCOOTER JOE" WILLINS

August 5, 1939-April 9, 2020

One summer evening in 2018, I saw Scooter Joe Willins (l) and Junior Farmer (r) outside Junior's auto shop and asked if I could photograph them. Little did I know who I was meeting. Junior's shop is legendary in Bed-Stuy, and Scooter Joe worked as a scooter cop in Bed-Stuy in the 1970s, issuing parking tickets and checking potholes with his partner. A black-and-white cop duo-very rare in those days-they ended up making 2,000 arrests and solving 38 murders instead, without ever using their weapons. I remember him explaining how important it is that police live in the neighborhood they work in. There is a built-in mutual respect between police and the community when that's the case. There is history. There is understanding. The police can actually make a difference. "

Scooter Joe and I talked for quite a while the day I made this photograph. It was one of those instances that reminded me that the best part of photography has nothing to do with a camera at all. The best part is what happens because you photograph.

Photographer's Bio: Amy Touchette is a photographer based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, who specializes in street portraits. She was trained at the International Center of Photography, where she now teaches. Her photographs are exhibited and published internationally, most recently at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, and in the book Women Street Photographers (2021). Touchette's second monograph, Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, garnered a Critical Mass 2021 Top 50. Last summer, photographs from the book were exhibited at Lincoln Center in Photoville's "The Brooklyn Connection" curated by Jamel Shabazz.

www.amytouchette.com