South Street Seaport resident and photographer Barbara Mensch has been taking photos of Lower Manhattan and the Fulton Fish Market for more than 40 years. Her work has been included in collections at MoMA, and exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and other locations. Now, her powerful images can be seen in a permanent photo exhibition at the newly renovated Tin Building, and in her new book, A Falling Off Place: The Transformation of Lower Manhattan (Fordham University Press, September 2023). Untapped New York Insiders can join Barbara Mensch for a tour of the new Tin Building exhibit and the surrounding waterfront on October 14th!
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Lower Manhattan Photo Exhibit Tour
On this tour, you’ll hear the gritty history of what we now know as the South Street Seaport, the portion of Lower Manhattan south of the Brooklyn Bridge, between the Financial District and the East River. You’ll start along the waterfront where Mensch will give a brief history of the area, once the busiest port in the world.
Next, you’ll dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly stories of the Fulton Fish Market, formerly the largest wholesale seafood market in the Western Hemisphere. Mensch will take you to sites where unsavory events like robberies and body dumping took place when the mafia ran the area.
Finally, you’ll get an inside look at, “The Nobility of Work,” a permanent installation inside the new Tin Building. The exhibit displays Mench’s original film negatives and photographs of workmen and fishmongers from the 1980s and 1990s as well as words from Mensch’s interviews and interactions with them. While you admire the images, Mensch will explain how she was able to infiltrate the rough crowd and how she captured the photos now on display. The exhibition is open to the public and is on view every day from 1 to 10 p.m.
Barbara Mensch’s new book, A Falling Off Place, chronicles the evolution and devolution of the fish market and the surrounding neighborhoods from the 1980s through the early 2000s. Her images show the impacts of gentrification, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and other historic events throughout the decades such as floods and fires. Her previous books include South Street and In the Shadow of Genius: The Brooklyn Bridge and Its Creators.
Lower Manhattan Photo Exhibit Tour
Next, check out 10 Secrets of the Fulton Fish Market