WORKERS: THE PIT 

Under the window of the loft overlooking Broadway, there once thrived an artisan market. As NOHO transformed away from an artist neighborhood to its new Wall Street hub, many poetic localities went. Throughout 2016, the market was replaced by the Great Jones Allee building, famed for its supposed private entrance, which, before the Porsche rolled in, was inhabited by colonies of rats. We suffered months of machine noise and construction dust in the building across the Allee. Yet, photographing day-by-day as the building went up made the hardship a poetic endeavor.

My main focus was on the workers in the pit, immigrants mostly. Most graphically, I noticed their presence after hurricane Sandy struck Manhattan. Almost only Latinos border up stores before the storm and cleaned up the streets from the rubble afterward. Vital and willing to give their all, construction workers, overlooked by society, have been a subject in my work for years, from Marina del Rey around different countries and back to San Francisco. Here is THE PIT.