South Street

South Street is Barbara G. Mensch's evocative tribute to the lost world of Lower Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market. For more than a century, a serious, tightly knit community of fishmongers, many of them recent immigrants and children of immigrants, thrived under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment, these men lived in a closed, internally policed environment that was deeply hostile to outsiders.As a young photographer in the early 1980s, Mensch bonded with this particular group of "authentic New Yorkers," becoming a confidante for their life stories, which were often filled with hardship, mystery, and misadventure. These striking photographs capture the unique personality and fierce secrecy of their vibrant working-class culture. Combined with lively commentary-reminiscent of Studs Terkel's riveting oral histories-these images offer a rare peek inside a society Philip Lopate calls "a precious last vestige of historic Gotham."