Description
Book SynopsisBefore Brooklyn rose to international fame there existed a vibrant borough of neighborhoods rich with connections and traditions. During the 1970s and 1980s, photographer Larry Racioppo, a South Brooklynite with roots three generations deep, recorded Brooklyn on the cusp of being the trendy borough we know today.
In Brooklyn Before, Racioppo lets us see the vitality of his native Brooklyn, stretching from historic Park Slope to the beginnings of Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park. His black and white photographs pull us deep into the community, stretching our memories back more than forty years and teasing out the long-lost recollections of life on the streets and in apartment homes. Racioppo has the fascinating ability to tell a story in one photograph and, because of his native bona fides, he depicts an intriguing set of true Brooklyn stories from the inside, in ways that an outsider simply cannot. On the pages of, Brooklyn Before the intimacy and roughness of lif
Trade Review
A moving portrait of a vanished world.
* New York Post *
Racioppo's process will delight any eager photography buff, looking to recapture a world before digital.... Collected together, Racioppo's photographs tell a story of a neighborhood at equilibrium, where laundry hangs undisturbed on a clothesline while kids play baseball in a vacant lot. A good reminder of the durability of New Yorkers in the 1970s.
* The Bowery Boys *
