The sociologist, photographer, and MacArthur Fellow Camilo José Vergara, known for his website Invincible Cities and his heartfelt documentation of devastated urban neighborhoods, says in this, his ninth, book that there are many Harlems he has been photographing since 1970. While that could mean the various populations he mentions—the early Jewish and Italian immigrant Harlemites, the big wave of African-Americans, the nearly as big influx of Latin Americans, the recent Senegalese and Malians—the pictures are primarily of built Harlem, its street life (concentrating on black people), and what could be called real-estate Harlem, new developments for the latest immigrants, middle-class whites.
The pictures of structural decline are heartbreaking. Whereas in western Harlem, block after block of exquisite row houses are largely intact, in eastern Harlem or on the commercial streets, the buildings photographed look denuded. For instance, in 18 shots, the facade of 65 East 125th Street, from 1977 to 2011, loses its 19th-century moldings piecemeal to alterations until finally even its framing Doric columns are gone.
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