Shot exclusively in the pre-gentrified blocks, fields, and buildings of the Lower East Side, the family photographed in this book occupied a multigenerational tenement house on Stanton Street. Their story is told through a protagonist named Glendalis. I was raised within a family system similar to hers, surrounded and embraced by an ever-present cast of relatives and friends. Like me, she was the youngest, and, much as I did, whispered out in the voice of a last-born — the messenger of a family. This work is informed by my own beginnings. I always perceived it as a search for my own girlhood as well as the larger themes of family and community; the relationships a person nurtures and how they transform along with us through time.

I was profoundly independent as a child. My nuclear family’s age gaps allowed me to basically raise myself; a feral, Gen X kid. I was engulfed by my enormous family. Most of the time, nobody even knew I was there. It is important to mention that in spite of the notion that I created a beatific family narrative in shooting this project, like mine, the reality was far from serene. Clues of this are hidden in the pictures. Crime, incarceration, gangs, and death are parts of the culture of certain neighborhoods and no family is immune to their trauma. This was something I learned a thing or two about growing up in New Haven, one of the most racially and economically segregated cities in America.

Embedding myself into a project is an unpredictable and organic process. To that point, my mother always says “a reason, a season, or a lifetime” for every relationship. A photographer moves on, and so do her subjects. This life of a documentary-style photographer is a solitary endeavor. We begin projects to seek something out, though, admittedly, we rarely know what we seek until it is found.

Every artist leaves a piece of themselves behind when they commit to a project. In turn, the work leaves fingerprints of itself upon the artist. It is cumulative, and none of it can be stripped away — no part is quantifiable. I liken developing a project to learning not only to speak, but to write, count, and dream in a previously unknown language.

Angela Cappetta