LOCALE
Uncommon Ground People Still Live Here text_Anicee Gaddis
photography_Alessandro Zuek Simonetti
If you are fortunate enough to walk the streets of Chinatown in Manhattan, one of the first things you will notice is an invisible electricity lighting up the senses. It is a tapestry of sights and sounds, a sonic mash-up of Mandarin and Cantonese and car horns and children’s laughter forming a many-layered urban sonata. It is often crowded and it is sometimes dirty and it is always colorful and it is constantly alive. It is an oasis of its own arrival located on an island of more than eight million. People still live here and it is still a place made by its people. It is a place where generations live in the present, defying the norms of the epicenter that surrounds it. Dubbed “The Last Neighborhood Standing,” New York’s Chinatown is a rare haven that preserves its cultural identity and centuries-steeped history as it continues to locate its destiny in the larger metropolitan and global flux. Photographer Alessandro Zuek Simonetti documents the subtleties and nuances of this neighborhood with an eye toward the unexpected. Through his images of buses, birds, silhouettes and street signage, The Last Neighborhood Standing becomes a surprising canvas of the everyday. More than just a state of mind, New York’s Chinatown is revealed as an essence of being, as an enigma of infinite awakening.
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