E12th Street, 1980 (4×5 film) — © Brian Rose/Ed Fausty

While working on a grant application having to do with urban farming and gardens I went back to my archive of unscanned Lower East Side photographs from 1980. I found one of a garden on E12th Street that I liked–taken on an early spring day it shows a number of people working. It’s interesting to note that the gardeners appear mostly Latino, which runs counter to my assumption that the urban gardening movement on the Lower East Side was largely a white middle class undertaking. This garden, by the way, still exists on E12th Street between Avenue A and B.

When I did my library slide talk a month ago, I was asked by someone in the audience how many photographs I had from 1980, suggesting that they should be preserved for the historical record–including pictures that were left out of the book. There are several hundred.  I do think the entire project should be scanned, and eventually made available to the public.

My exhibition of 14 LES photographs is still up at the Lower East Side Visitor Center at 49 Orchard Street. The next exhibition there begins on May 14th, so I will leave my prints up for a couple more weeks. If anyone is interested in purchasing one or more of the mounted exhibition prints, please get in touch. I am offering them at a favorable price.