Over the years it also became home to large numbers of immigrants; originally from the American South, Latin America and the West Indies, and more recently from Africa and Haiti. It’s a very culturally diverse neighborhood where, unlike my previous apartment in Manhattan, I was the minority.
But that started to change. The gentrification that has occurred in many areas of Brooklyn began to happen here. In the three years I lived there I witnessed a big transformation. This street portrait project was an attempt to document the people of Fulton Street before the face of Bed-Stuy changed forever.
And personally, it was also a way for me, as a white person in an predominantly black neighborhood, to connect with the people in the community I lived in, many of whom probably regarded me as part of the gentrification.
