The photographer Angela Cappetta was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. But when she moved to New York in 1990, her whole worldview shifted. That was the year Cappetta took up residence in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a gritty area known for its tight-knit, family-oriented communities (post-gentrification, LES would become a hot spot for NYC’s nightlife and a venerable tourist destination). “Beautiful families in my neighborhood welcomed me onto the block with open arms,” Cappetta tells W of the Lower East Side. “Not a night went by where I wasn’t greeted on the street from a window or a lawn chair.” Now, the 53-year-old artist is paying homage to that area—and the relationships she cultivated there—in Glendalis, her latest book. The project is a heartfelt photographic journey into the lives of a Puerto Rican family living in a Stanton Street tenement in New York City’s Lower East Side during the 1990s. Through intimate portraits and unflinching realism, the book explores themes of community, trauma, and the enduring bonds of family amid the challenges of urban life. At the center of the story is Glendalis, the youngest member of the family, who becomes the link between her clan’s private world and the viewer’s perspective.
By focusing on Glendalis as the main character, Cappetta emphasizes the role of youth as both witnesses and messengers within the family unit. “The home of a mom and her three girls is sacred territory,” she says. “The beauty of the mundane—parenting, homework, dinner, sports—brings rhythm to these day-to-day rituals. And it glistens more brightly in neighborhoods with dust on its boots.”
Through this work, Cappetta was able to reflect on her own upbringing as a Gen X kid in New York, navigating the joys and struggles of growing up in a close family and a challenging urban environment. “I grew up with zero to no personal space or boundaries—typical of a large Mediterranean family,” says Cappetta. “Everyone was perpetually on top of each other. For those of us lucky enough to grow up within certain family systems, we are able to recognize and appreciate the dynamic when we trip over it in the wild.”
The Lower East Side in the pre-gentrified ’90s was a vivid and evocative setting, the social and physical textures clearly influencing Glendalis. “[The neighborhood] was gorgeous to look at and full of stories,” Cappetta says. “Working in the mornings on the street with my 6×9 [camera] helped me avoid the dealers and johns who came out at night, so I didn’t feel like I was missing much.”
Cappetta’s narrative is steeped in nostalgia, yet it avoids romanticizing the past. Instead, it offers an unflinching examination of the Lower East Side’s socioeconomic realities. The juxtaposition of the tenement’s physical closeness with the emotional complexities of its inhabitants creates an exploration of intimacy, resilience, and survival in the neighborhood before it was transformed by gentrification. “I actively avoid the cliche of poverty porn,” she adds. “Exploitation is not where my interests lie. I strive to be measured and respectful.”
“For as sketchy as the LES was, it was a real neighborhood,” the photographer continues. “I had a clean apartment in a well-run building with lovely neighbors.” But gentrification isn’t just about change; it’s a forced decision of who gets to stay and who is forced to leave. “The red letter issues of neighborhoods in crisis are thinner when the lives are built around families.”
Glendalis also addresses the challenges of living in a community affected by crime and incarceration. “[All of these] are realities built into the fiber of many challenged cities,” Cappetta says. “When I lived on the Lower East Side, it was a place where artists could go because it was what we could afford. My well-off friends threw subtle shade my way for living there, and yet, in spite of connecting to a new track and a new life, it felt risky and familiar.”
The book is a reflection of not only the family it portrays, but also the artist’s own relationship to memory, identity, and the very act of seeing. “At the onset of the project, daily shooting was a wonderful respite. I never knew photography could feel so organic,” Cappetta says. “As the work became more defined, I realized I was tempering my own experience as a youngest daughter through the rearview mirror of my new life.”
Cappetta is often asked what advice or perspective she would share, if she knew then what she knows now. “That version of me versus who I am now hasn’t changed much, I just have more stories to share,” she says. “I’ve had to adapt a lot, otherwise my artistic practice would never be what it is.” When asked if she would alter anything about Glendalis, she adds, “I wouldn’t have changed a thing; not a spec or a squiggle.”
Glendalis is available now from L’Artiere.
