A01=Camilo Jose Vergara
A23=Timothy J. Gilfoyle
african american
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
apollo
architecture
Author_Camilo Jose Vergara
automatic-update
blackness
buildings
business
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AJC
celebrations
city
commemorations
COP=United States
crime
cultural capital
decay
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fashion
gentrification
geography
ghetto
globalization
graffiti
harlem
heritage
integration
Language_English
memorial
michael jackson
murals
neighborhood
new york
nonfiction
PA=Available
parades
photography
place
poverty
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
race
rappers
ruins
segregation
softlaunch
space
stoop gatherings
street life
tourism
urban
violence
Product details
- ISBN 9780226853369
- Weight: 1843g
- Dimensions: 24 x 28mm
- Publication Date: 11 Dec 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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For more than a century, Harlem has been the epicenter of black America, the celebrated heart of African American life and culture - but it has also been a byword for the problems that have long plagued inner-city neighborhoods: poverty, crime, violence, disinvestment, and decay. Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara has been chronicling the neighborhood for forty-three years, and Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto is an unprecedented record of urban change. Vergara began his documentation of Harlem in the tradition of such masters as Helen Levitt and Aaron Siskind, and he later turned his focus on the neighborhood's urban fabric, both the buildings that compose it and the life and culture embedded in them. By repeatedly returning to the same locations over the course of decades, Vergara is able to show us a community that is constantly changing - some areas declining, as longtime businesses give way to empty storefronts, graffiti, and garbage, while other areas gentrify, with corporate chain stores coming in to compete with the mom-and-pop shops.
He also captures the ever-present street life of this densely populated neighborhood, from stoop gatherings to graffiti murals memorializing dead rappers to impersonators honoring Michael Jackson in front of the Apollo, as well as the growth of tourism and racial integration. Woven throughout the images is Vergara's own account of his project and his experience of living and working in Harlem. Taken together, his unforgettable words and images tell the stories of how Harlem and its residents navigated the segregation, dereliction, and slow recovery of the closing years of the twentieth century and the boom and racial integration of the twenty-first. A deeply personal investigation, Harlem will take its place with the best portrayals of urban life.
Camilo Jose Vergara is a photographer and writer, a MacArthur fellow, and the author of many books.
