But not a single photo of a restaurant or of Mott street!
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The interesting thing about the latest "wave" of Chinese immigrants is that they are not elderly and poor, they are young and the children of wealthy parents who can afford to pay full freight at American colleges and universities.
Where various "Little Italys" were subsumed by burgeoning Chinatowns in recent decades, I think in the near future you will see a significant number of newly graduated Chinese settle in the neighborhoods surrounding their former college campuses.
There will be a twist on "town vs. gown" hostility when Chinese speakers no longer eat at the school commissary and begin to shop at the Korean owned grocery in a predominantly black or "hispanic" neighborhood.
Fantastic photos by Bud Glick. I grew up in Chinatown 1962 - 1979, then returned 1980 - 85....attended P.S.1 K-6, my Girl Scout troop met at True Light, spent all my allowance at Chinatown Fair, my family still lives there. Also took many street photos as a teenager. It's seen so much change (the laundry across the street where I dropped off my dad's shirts is long gone - how I loved the smell in there), though in many ways retained much of the Chinatown I grew up with in the 60s/70s. I dread what's to come.....
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Powerful, honest, real--full of love--such beautiful photographs! Congratulations (Bud Glick) for such timeless, and inspiring work.
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Beautiful photos, presented with incredible warmth and insight! Thank you for publishing photos that humanize this often marginalized community.
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Great photos! And so nice to see no one's staring at a phone or iPad, especially the children.
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After 9/11 pushed me from Battery Park, I lived for two years in an illegal converted factory building overlooking Canal at Walker. The following four years I lived perched above Main Street in Flushing. The past decade I've lived in a dozen cities inside China, yet, like Bud Glick, I know I only see each Chinese community through an outsider's blue eyes. Still, even with cultural myopia it is impossible to be unmoved and unimpressed by the power, persistence and pride that Chinese display wherever they choose to live.
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Terrific, insightful photographs...I was wishing, as I was reading, that there were stories to go with the photos...so happy to see that has been, and still is being, done...thank you, and good luck in your work, Mr. Glick...
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A great article and set of images. The contrasts and similarities to San Francisco Chinatown makes it interesting to me.
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Lovely photographs. Go see the exhibition at NYC's MOCA.
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beautiful work Bud, wonderful sentiments as well. Documentary photography is so vital to our civic discourse and our shared sustained development of humanity. Thank you. Jeff
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I worked in lower Manhattan for decades starting in about 1969. I went to Chinatown almost every day to eat in restaurants, buy fish and vegetables at the open air markets, and walk, walk, walk. These pictures make me very homesick - I miss Chinatown so much.
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Having grown up as a Chinese-American in Chinatown since the early 60’s, I began my move away from the old neighborhood right around 1980 with attending college and the subsequent move into post-graduate life. Every subsequent visit to Chinatown would always reveal many changes to the area, including physical growth, increasing cultural and ethnic diversity and the corresponding loss of the small neighborhood feel.
I look forward to seeing this photo exhibit. Just in case, here’s the information on the Museum of Chinese in America:
215 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
855-955-MOCA
mocanyc.org
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Thank you! Beautiful.
Another view, very thorough and from within are the photographs of Corky Lee, who has also been photographing Chinatown and us since the 70’s.
Warm regards, C Sun
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As I recall, color photography was readily available in 1981. These photos are very nice, but in my opinion they do not capture the vibrancy of the immigrant community that existed then. These photos almost appear to cast each individual in the same semi-depressing light, almost as if their lives are all the same, all a struggle.
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@M
Interesting comment. With that in mind, I went back through all the photos and I found only 6 out of 16 to be "semi-depressing." For example, my visceral take away from the photo of the man with the wife he could not see for 30 years is one of love and reunification. The photos of the men chatting in the back of a store, the men play mah jong, and the older bachelors sitting down to a meal spoke to me of resilience, and in the case of the first two reminded me of scenes I've seen all over China--that continuity despite geographic hurtles is amazing. Black and white photography is a medium unto itself and I like it. I feel the vibrancy you allude to coming through these photos. Where you see struggle, I mainly see triumph.
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