Product Description

New York City has been home to a Puerto Rican populationsince the mid-1900s, with the most noticeable migrationboom beginning in the 1950s. As Puerto Ricans settled inNew York over the years they stamped the city with theirculture, indelibly altering neighborhoods like the South Bronx,the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, and downtown Brooklynwith rhythm, style, flavor, art, language, and , Latinocuisine.

Arlene Gottfried, herself a native New Yorker, grew up side by-side with the burgeoning Puerto Rican community, neverstraying far from its influence whether living in Brooklyn orthe LES. In the heart of the barrio, Gottfried began shootingpictures inspired by her bohemian friends and using them assubjectsin apartments, on the streets, and in the park, intimes of radiant joy and heart-breaking sorrow.

is Gottfrieds ode to Nuyoricanlife and style, from the 70s to the present, shot with anunfailingly lyrical eye and full of vibrant personalities:eccentric bad-boys, white-clad church-goers, an afro-sportingpoet in a groovy leisure suit, a gambling grandpa withpainted-on eyebrows and a cowboy mustache, and even yourgrandparents beloved, plastic-covered furniture.

This is the New York of broken televisions littered throughoutthe streets, burned-out abandoned buildings, neighborhoodfiestas with pigs roasting on spits, and home to outcastsliving in poverty. Gottfried offers first-hand testimony to thepain of alienation, neglect, drug addiction, and ultimatelycrime, prison, and death. But there is also evidence of thelively and intimate community that helps them overcomethese obstacles.