Website 3 Title - Past Exhibitions

The South Street Seaport Museum is proud to present an exhibition of photographs by contemporary photographer Barbara Mensch. The exhibition is curated by Thomas Mellins, special projects curator for the Museum of The City of New York.

These photographs are Barbara Mensch’s tribute to the lost world of Lower Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market. For more than a century, a tightly knit community of workingmen, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, thrived in their nocturnal jobs as fishmongers under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment these men worked in a closed, internally-policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders.

Many of the images were taken in 1979-1983, a time of profound change in the political and economic landscape of Lower Manhattan. The waterfront below the Brooklyn Bridge was targeted for economic revival, spurred by the demolition of important locales in the fish market, existing piers, working storefronts, saloons and hotels to make room for new commercial spaces, including a shopping mall.

In her book South Street, Barbara Mensch recalls:
"The city planners are talking about glass and steel and a quaint replica of New York’s long ago harbor that will rise up like Disneyland out of the ashes of the market."

Ms. Mensch encountered many initial obstacles in her effort and passion to tell the story of the fish market. The beginning of her work coincided with a series of well-publicized criminal investigations headed by then federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani. The ensuing climate of paranoia toward outsiders, especially those with cameras, created a barrier mentality that took years to bridge. It was only through her constant, nightly presence in this dark world that Mensch was able to change her status to that of 'insider.' It was this trust and comfort that enabled her to achieve the intimate portraits of the men in their environment.

With an often stark and profound reality, Mensch’s large scale images in the exhibition tell the story of the workers, many of whom grew up in the surrounding neighborhood. Their fathers and their fathers before them went to work at ‘the market.' Mensch depicts these men as proud, loyal, street-smart survivors, who questioned their role in a society that was becoming less and less respectful of their working class culture. Their remarkable faces come to life in many of these large-scale portraits.

In his introduction to South Street Phillip Lopate writes:
Their faces and bodies express an almost ancient awareness of the price that must be paid to be a man….to hold one’s ground… Because she came to know so deeply the ways of the fish market and to grasp the stresses the workers and fishmongers were enduring, she was able to incorporate that insight into her images. The implements the men carry whether grappling hooks, carving knives, cigars or guns (a playful assertion that all the worst thing the DA’s investigators said were true) all add to the story. One can read these photographs as a sequenced graphic novel or as stills from a feature movie.

A quarter-century has passed since Ms. Mensch photographed the life of this great New York City institution. Since then, the Fulton Market has completely disappeared from South Street.

By showcasing this lost community, the exhibition poses critical questions about our changing urban landscape.