BOMB Journal | Lower East Side Yearbook

I grew up throughout all 5 boroughs, with the Lower East Side at all times being dwelling. I come from a household of photographers: My grandfather, Luis Mata, was a marriage photographer; my aunt, Chayo Mata, labored in vogue images; and my mom, Mary Ann Mata, documented our household by way of images. As a youngster, I turned the digital camera on myself and my very own life, beginning with mates and neighbors and finally spending years photographing punk exhibits. Punk confirmed me that artwork and group care may exist aspect by aspect.

My mom and I lived within the shelter system earlier than we had been positioned on the Lillian Wald Houses, a New York City Housing Authority growth on the Lower East Side. Public housing stays one of many final really inexpensive housing choices for New Yorkers—residing within the Lillian Wald Houses has allowed me to be an artist. My mom was energetic within the tenant affiliation, and thru her I realized about neighborhood organizing. During the pandemic, I educated myself about packages proposed for NYCHA developments and the continuing privatization of public housing and the way it impacts our lives.

For the 2021–22 faculty yr, I used to be a educating artist at City-As-School High School, my alma mater, the place I led a yearbook class. And in 2023, as a photographer in residence with the FREE FILM Project at WORTHLESSSTUDIOS, I used an Airstream trailer as a neighborhood picture clubhouse. My college students from the Lower Eastside Girls Club realized the way to use 35 mm movie cameras, photographing our neighborhood and creating their very own black-and-white movie. Neighbors shared tales and mirrored on how the black-and-white photographs reminded them of “back in the day,” typically speaking about how a lot the Lower East Side has modified in conversations that demonstrated how deeply individuals need their histories to be remembered. Those experiences sparked a query: Why not create a yearbook impressed by punk zines and crammed with images, collages, poetry, and paintings made with and by my neighbors?

What started in 2023 with simply 4 of us has grown right into a collective of over twenty Lower East Side Yearbook Committee members. After our latest exhibition at Abrons Art Center, Lower East Side Yearbook: A Living Archive, curated by Ali Rosa-Salas, extra neighbors felt impressed to hitch us, drawn by shared reminiscence, care, and a need to assist carry the tales of the Lower East Side ahead. Through workshops, gatherings, and shared artistic experiences, we are bringing neighbors of all generations again collectively and strengthening the social cloth of our group.

Lower East Side Yearbook celebrates the spirit and legacy of public housing residents. I name it a residing archive as a result of we’re including images, drawings, and love letters to the Lower East Side to doc what’s shaping our group in actual time, whether or not it’s celebrating accessible inexperienced areas for NYCHA residents or experiencing the lasting impacts of environmental injustice and Hurricane Sandy. Looking ahead, the imaginative and prescient is for the yearbook to dwell in public faculties, libraries, and group areas, in order that Lower East Side public housing residents could be seen, heard, and remembered, in addition to go on the historical past of the neighborhood on to future generations.

—Destiny Mata, as advised to Marianela D’Aprile