An evocative chronicle of the Lower East Side's halcyon days, from
Giovan's archives
In 1984, Tria Giovan moved to a tenement building on Clinton Street on
New York City's Lower East Side. She wandered the streets photographing
as if in a foreign land. Loisaida-- as it is known to some--was as
gritty, authentic and humble as it was exotic, vibrant and colorful. The
melding cultures and humanity she encountered inspired these
photographs. Giovan left the neighborhood and the work behind in 1990
without ever editing or producing the majority of the photographs. The
negatives languished until the pandemic.
Tria Giovan: Loisaida New York Street Work 1984-1990 is a time
capsule, a cultural and historical record of a 1980s Lower East Side
that fostered robust communities of diverse populations, including the
many immigrants who took pride in making Loisaida their home. Her images
invite curiosity and evoke nostalgia about a place in a bygone era that
has been forever altered through waves of gentrification. Part
preservation, part humanistic engagement, this project contributes to a
historical visual legacy of the ever-evolving, always evocative Lower
East Side.
Tria Giovan (born 1961) is the author of Cuba: The Elusive Island
(1996), Sand Sea Sky: The Beaches of Sagaponack (2012) and The Cuba
Archive (2017). Exhibited in the US and internationally, her work is
held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn
Museum, the Library of Congress, the Parrish Art Museum, the Jewish
Museum, the Museum of the City of New York and the New York Public
Library.
