Life On the Lower East Side

A young Rebecca Lepkoff, camera in hand, navigated the streets of the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s capturing the lives and times of a vibrant, close-knit, and functional multiethnic community. Available now in a paperback edition, Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff's work, highlights the lost neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, from the Bowery to the East River. With more than 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs, the book reveals the dynamic community of Italians, Irish, Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. Lepkoff's images uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side has both stayed the same and changed forever.