It's been more than three decades since Tria Giovan left the Lower East Side, after living there for much of the 1980s. To say things have changed would be an understatement, but to see it then is a revelation, even to her, and she took hundreds of photos.
"I was there for six years, and I apparently didn't realize that I had taken so many photographs," she recalled in a recent phone conversation. It was more than enough to make a book, "Loisaida: New York Street Work, 1984-1990," which was published this year by Damiani.
In 1984, her camera shot film and she lived in a tenement building on Clinton Street. The city had entered the "go-go '80s," but gentrification would not hit the area for years to come. It was a neighborhood of immigrants, and like many city enclaves of the time, also of drug use and crime.
In this time capsule, walls are graffitied, windows boarded up, some business signs look as if they haven't changed since the 1940s. There is litter, dirty snow, junker cars, and abandoned buildings, but also striking images of color and community vibrancy.
Although she was taking street photography, her first official series was focused on the interiors of public buildings like synagogues and abandoned schoolhouses. It was picked up by some galleries, and museums purchased images for their collections.
"I think that took precedence, even though I was still wandering around shooting on the streets. You know, I love the sense of exploration about that neighborhood, both inside and out, and the sense of discovery. It was just exciting."
By the time she moved out of the neighborhood in 1990, she was busy with shooting assignments and had started visiting Cuba. "My first trip was in 1990, right as I was leaving the Lower East Side. Then that became my complete focus and obsession. So then, you know, the pictures just sat there."
She had not forgotten the street scenes, but the group of images had been packed away and mostly untouched since she made contact sheets from the negatives. "There were a few pictures that I remember, but I just never really looked at it," she said.
During Covid, she had some extra time at her house in Sag Harbor and began scanning her film negatives in order to preserve them. "To go back and find all these other pictures, I was like, 'Wow, okay, well, why is that? I can't believe that.' "
In the book, the play of color is striking. There are various shades of pink and red, minty greens, and pale sky blues. A woman leaning against a public phone (remember those?) in bright yellow pants is near a guy on a bike with a visible yellow sock. A family, almost to a member dressed in pink, stands by a pink car.
Ms. Giovan said there were images she remembered but much more that she didn't, but she liked what she saw. Having grown up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, those faded tropical tones appealed to her. "That's kind of what honed my sensitivity to color."
Comparing then to now, she said, "It's something that I've been thinking about, and I wonder if people in the 1940s would come back to New York in the '80s and say, 'Oh, my God, this is terrible. Look how it's changed.' You know, it is constantly evolving."
She said she hasn't been there that much recently, but when she has visited in the past couple of years, she felt the same identity and energy even though the businesses have all changed.
For an Instagram project from her publisher, she went to where the cover photo of the book was taken at Delancey and Suffolk Street. "It wasn't a weekend, so it was kind of dead," she recalled. But the store on the corner was now a Verizon store. "It was sort of nondescript, a nothing nothing. And I stood there for a while thinking that something might happen," but it wasn't working.
"Then I walked down to where my apartment was, and stood on the corner there. Despite the fact that everything was changed, Clinton Street still has its own sort of unique identity. I think it has to do with the architecture and the scale of the buildings. There's just a bunch of different stuff all thrown together. So that felt better. Yeah, it's not a CVS."
