Unseen Uptown

(click photo to enlarge)

I had lived up here for three years before it dawned on me that my neighborhood might make a great documentary project. The first hint I had of my present artistic endeavor was while driving back from Jersey across the George Washington Bridge, seeing the modest skyline of Washington Heights and thinking about what my neighborhood had to offer: the Cloisters, acres of parkland, a vibrantly diverse community. The idea flickered through my head - this would be an interesting place to photograph. But it disappeared just as quickly, a casualty of a cluttered mind.

The next time I thought about it, I was eating (alone) in an Indian restaurant at West 187th Street. The conversation at the table next to mine was about how the neighborhood had started going downhill since all the yuppies started moving in. This is the sort of statement that gets a photographer excited, considering the only yuppie trapping that came to mind was a Starbucks that opened a couple of years ago. Imagine, not a movie theater north of 125th Street, yet this resident sensed some demographic sea change that threatened to capsize her sense of home.

It's difficult to imagine a stampede of outsiders descending on us. First off, most Manhattanites don't know we exist. Tell someone in, say, Midtown you live in Inwood and they are likely to locate you in the Bronx or, worse, Westchester County. You can only blame them so much. Most maps of the island end at Harlem or somewhere in Central Park. Tourists, like ancient sailors, must fear exploring beyond the edge of the map lest they fall off the edge of the world.

Does any 60 blocks of your town offer live poultry markets, a room where George Washington slept, native growth forest, and a collection of paintings by Spanish masters such as Velasquez, Goya, and Manet? Poke around some of our less explored nooks and crannies and discover the seams where American and Dominican cultures meet.

By no means are we even unanimous in wanting to lure more folks up here. Many, such as the woman in the restaurant, see what has happened to other once undesirable neighborhoods - Chelsea, Williamsburg, Hells Kitchen - and worry about the multi-headed BananaRepublicGapforKidsBedBathandBeyond hydra moving in. For them gentrification is a four letter word. The other camp believes that the community needs a few more businesses to offer needed services so money isn't spent elsewhere.

Sure, both are good arguments. But I'm a photographer. What's here now is interesting, and any future change could be just as compelling. So, to those of you who heretofore didn't know we existed, this is what we look like, now.

mike fitelson
august 2003

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