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Photo Book Reviews

South Street by Barbara Mensch, Introduction by Philip Lopate For almost two centuries, the Fulton Fish Market resided in lower Manhattan.  Barbara Mensch's new book, South Street pays homage to its history through stunning photos of grit and beauty. Article rating: 7.38

On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Fulton Fish Market resided from January 1822 to November 13th, 2005 when it moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx.  It was the oldest fish market that stayed continuously in one place, the largest in the Western Hemisphere and a poignant metaphor for the corporate takeover and constant change that is New York City.

© Barbara Mensch

© Barbara Mensch

Through a comprehensive and colorful introduction by renowned writer Philip Lopate and Barbara Mensch’s grainy, beautiful photographs, we are taken into a world that most people never saw, and now, sadly, never can. 

© Barbara Mensch

© Barbara Mensch

Lopate’s history begins between 1737 and 1756, the time period in which the area of the Fulton Fish market was created via landfill.  The market was originally an all-purpose market, comprised of butchers, fruit and vegetable stands, etc., although its potential as a fish market was recognized long before it became a reality.  Lopate claims the life of the market is a case in urban ecology, and that the key question is not why it died, but rather how did it last as long as it did.  As he says, the Fulton Fish Market was the “precious last vestige of historic Gotham”. 

Barbara Mensch moved to the south street seaport in 1979, and spent the next few years gaining access to the life of the fish mongers, a secretive and mob-run establishment that let few outsiders have access.  The story she tells of the men who worked there, woven throughout the gritty photographs that recall a Manhattan far in the past, is powerful and evocative.  Most of the men working as fishmongers were sons, grandsons or cousins, their family having worked in the market for decades.  As the immigrant population grew in the early 1900’s, so did the population and family ties that the market was essentially made of. 

Mensch’s photographs echo this struggle for success, the hard life it was a part of and the arduous love the men had for their work that drove them on.  The choice to shoot in black and white seems like no choice at all, and her usual lack of flash makes the viewer double check the year they were taken in.  Throughout some photographs, the skyscrapers being built in the background rear up like steel trees, shadowing the men and creating even more of a sense of otherworldliness. The essay that Mensch incorporates throughout the photographs is a perfect compliment to the images she took, the comment on capitalism apparent in the photograph of two women in suits walking past men with grappling hooks on their shoulders in the early morning hours. 

Many years after Mensch’s time near the fish market she was called back on a newspaper assignment to document the market’s last days.  During her time there a man that she used to know came up to her, and asked if she would take photographs of “his place”, a company that had been in his family for three generations.  He wanted to be able to always remember it.

More than anything “South Street” is a commentary on social and corporate uprising, and the undeniable changes that New York City is so well known for.  A beautiful, well-written and well-documented New York that may be gone as we know it, but that stays alive in the words and images presented here.

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