Prince Street Girls – Hardcover Susan Meiselas

Description

This publication is one of four books that constitute TBW Books Series No. 5 – which was printed in an edition of 1000.

Susan Meiselas: “In 1975 … I was riding a bicycle through my neighborhood in Little Italy when suddenly a blast of light flashed into my eyes, blinding me for a moment. Its source was a group of girls fooling around with a mirror trying to reflect the sun on my face. That was the day I met the Prince Street Girls, the name I gave the group that hung out on the nearby corner almost every day. The girls were from small Italian-American families and they were almost all related. I was the stranger who didn’t belong. Little Italy was mostly for Italians then.

‘Prince Street Girls’ began as a series of incidental encounters. They’d see me coming and call out, ‘Take a picture! Take a picture!’ At the beginning I was making pictures just to share with them. If we met in the market or at the pizza parlor they would reluctantly introduce me to their parents, but I was never invited into any of their homes. I was their secret friend, and my loft became a kind of hideaway when they dared to cross the street, which their parents had forbidden.”