Before the Roofless Mall
These are a few photographs from the New York I remember, a harsh, cruel city, full of energy, expectation, and possibility.
When I first picked up a camera in the late 1980’s, and began photographing Tompkins Square Park and the city around me, it seemed as if there were pictures everywhere.
I’m not going to go on a rant about the numbing effects of gentrification, about how a rich city is a dead city. Cities change. What is gone is gone.
Besides, who is to say if New York is changing or I’m just getting older? Do I miss a more vibrant, unpredictable, affordable New York, or just my place in it as a young man, when I took these photographs?