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The shtetl, lost here among Polish fields and groves, might be called Turek or Przasnysz, Konin or Maków, yet what one remembers is not the name but the old marketplace reeking of tar and dung where a…
Most of the immigrants came from Italy and Eastern Europe. They were taken in launches to Ellis Island. There, in a curiously ornate human warehouse of red brick and gray stone, they were tagged…
He remembers well how for the first time in his life he tried to cross the big street in Baghdad. With one hand his mother held onto him and with the other she held her long and wide cape, looked…
Mel:I’m not having an anxiety attack. I’m a little tense.Edna:Why don’t you take a Valium?Mel:I took one.Edna:Then take another one.Mel:I took another one. They don’t work any more. [He sits down…
Manhattan, a high narrow kingdom as hopeful as any that ever was, burst upon him full force, a great and imperfect steel-tressed palace of a hundred million chambers, many-tiered gardens, pools…
“Cookalein” is a story from Will Eisner’s graphic novel, A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories. The “cookalein” (or kuchalein, “cook for yourself”) was a popular and affordable type of…
The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing or lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of crime are not denied the light of day, even though they…
The street lamps of the Old Town began to flare out in preparation for the night. And soon the yellow gas-lights shone in the shop windows too, and outside the little…
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor’s window.
“Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?”…
This photograph is one of a series of street photographs that Paul Strand took in 1916, using a camera outfitted with a false lens pointed away from what was being photographed. This enabled him to…
