“I came to NYC in 1990 from Paris as a film student, and I instantly fell in love with Manhattan. I felt like I was stepping on a giant film set. It was everything that I had imagined but bigger, louder, crazier, and sometimes scarier,” tells photographer Grégoire Alessandrini about starting his New York in the 1990s archive.
“As a film student at City College in Harlem, I quickly started discovering all kinds of neighborhoods to shoot student films, but buying a photo camera suddenly gave me an incredible feeling of freedom. I was able to explore the city by myself, “recording” everything that seemed to give New York City its incredible edge. Old buildings, graffiti, signs, street scenes, and parties,” he said to Bored Panda.
At the time, he also started working as a journalist for a French magazine, which further allowed him to capture the era of this city.
Alessandrini tells us that New York was very different back then, and he’s glad to see how it changed in a fairly short amount of time. “The city was close to bankruptcy, mugging was a common occurrence, the crack epidemic was at its peak, and homeless people were living in the subway and the parks. Yet, you felt an extraordinary energy and the possibility to experience anything you wanted,” he says.
Rent in the East Village, the Lower East Side, or Chelsea areas was still relatively affordable, and nightlife was thriving. “It also felt like the end of a period with an amazing heritage still visible here and there, from Keith Haring murals to landmark rock venues like the Continental or the iconic CBGB’s. Believe it or not, my neighbors in Alphabet City in 1992 were Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell,” shares Alessandrini.
The city started getting cleaned up with the election of mayor Rudy Giuliani in the mid-90s, he says. “Especially the 42nd Street area, which went from a very seedy location made famous by films like Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy to “a family entertainment district." I guess Mayor Bloomberg then finished the job to make New York safe and cleaner, but it seems that so much was lost in the process.”
Having completed such a project, he realized just what a transformation the city has gone through. “Entire blocks were destroyed, the architecture was changing as well as the sociology of entire neighborhoods. The city that I had loved, experienced, and photographed seemed to be fading away at an amazing pace.
This is what made me want to share my pictures, as I believe they tell the story of a city that is now almost gone. I am very happy to see that so many New Yorkers and people from all around the world enjoy these images as they remind them of the New York they knew and often miss dearly.”
Alessandrini believes that creating photo archives of cities like New York and beyond in a specific period becomes a priceless testimony. “The most trivial things that you photograph can sometimes have significance that you would have never imagined at the time. It’s a precious gift for those who share this experience with you but also for those who want to understand how a city used to be and how it became what it is today.”
