Maddalena Polletta

20 Pictures From 30 Years in my Neighborhood

$8.00

2015
20 inkjet printed photographs, printed cardstock cover
4 1/8 in. x 3 in. x 1/4 in.
Edition: 100

Cities change. Neighborhoods change. People change. Maddalena Polletta has created a souvenir folder full of her personal photos of the resplendently grubby Lower East Side of New York. These photos show fragments of the neighborhood’s latter heyday of crime, drugs and violence–a heyday which most New Yorkers of a certain age celebrate, usually without irony. How we have recast the bad old days as the good old days reveals as much about the present as it does about the past. This set of photos presents a very personal perspective of a place in time which instantly unpacks issues of race, politics and social justice… and nostalgia. Numbered.

20 Pictures From 30 Years in my Neighborhood

Maddalena Polletta has lived and worked in New York City for the past 29 years. Since 1991 she has collaborated with a group of Artists and Writers, through the collective Fleabites, on artist books/zines. These books are sold cheaply and distributed via bookstores, collectives and art spaces. Maddalena lives with her husband, Pedro Diez, and son, Dante Diez, in a sixth floor walk-up.