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Susan Meiselas: Tar Beach: Life on the Rooftops of Little Italy 1920–75
Found family photographs from New York's Little Italy portray a vanished way of life A Chicago Tribune 2020 holiday gift guide pick
In Tar Beach , photographer and Little Italy resident Susan Meiselas (born 1948) brings together found pictures that were made, kept and gathered by various families who handed them down from 1940 to the early 1970s. Reflections from the community offer perspectives of multiple generations, as local author Angel Marinaccio “If you had an accomplishment―communion, confirmation, wedding, graduation or birthday, you‘d dress up in your best outfit and go to the rooftop to take pictures and celebrate with your family.”
The introduction to Tar Beach is written by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who grew up on the streets portrayed in this collection. He “The roof was our escape hatch and it was our sanctuary. The endless crowds, the filth and the grime, the constant noise, the chaos, the claustrophobia, the non-stop motion of everything … you would walk up that flight of stairs, open the door, and you were above it all. You could breathe. You could dream. You could be.”
Meiselas, along with two of her neighbors, Angel Marinaccio and Virginia Bynum, collected and curated these vernacular photographs and memories to convey the feeling of this special place and time in the daily lives of Italian immigrants as they made their way to becoming part of American culture.
In Tar Beach , photographer and Little Italy resident Susan Meiselas (born 1948) brings together found pictures that were made, kept and gathered by various families who handed them down from 1940 to the early 1970s. Reflections from the community offer perspectives of multiple generations, as local author Angel Marinaccio “If you had an accomplishment―communion, confirmation, wedding, graduation or birthday, you‘d dress up in your best outfit and go to the rooftop to take pictures and celebrate with your family.”
The introduction to Tar Beach is written by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who grew up on the streets portrayed in this collection. He “The roof was our escape hatch and it was our sanctuary. The endless crowds, the filth and the grime, the constant noise, the chaos, the claustrophobia, the non-stop motion of everything … you would walk up that flight of stairs, open the door, and you were above it all. You could breathe. You could dream. You could be.”
Meiselas, along with two of her neighbors, Angel Marinaccio and Virginia Bynum, collected and curated these vernacular photographs and memories to convey the feeling of this special place and time in the daily lives of Italian immigrants as they made their way to becoming part of American culture.
111 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2020
About the author
Susan Meiselas
45 books9 followersSusan Meiselas is a documentary photographer based in New York. She is the author of Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Pandora’s Box (2001), Encounters with the Dani (2003) Prince Street Girls (2016), A Room Of Their Own (2017), Tar Beach (2020), and Carnival Strippers Revisited (2022).
Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). Most recently, she received the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles (2019), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), and the Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography (2022). Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present was initiated by the Jeu de Paume in Paris and traveled to Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, among others.
Meiselas has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). Most recently, she received the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles (2019), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), and the Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography (2022). Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present was initiated by the Jeu de Paume in Paris and traveled to Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, among others.
Meiselas has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
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