The photographer Destiny Mata’s love for the Lower East Side is familial and tender; the neighborhood is both her home and her muse. In fact: “It’s more than my home,” she told Hyperallergic. “It’s a part of me.” Born in San Antonio, Texas, Mata grew up in New York City, where she and her mother spent time in the shelter system before moving to the Lillian Wald Houses, a New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) project on Avenue D. Mata — whose mother is an artist, and father and late aunt both photographers — lives there today, the apartment’s walls painted a variety of warm colors. Her ongoing Lower East Side Yearbook project, presented at Abrons Arts Center as Lower East Side Yearbook: A Living Archive, is certainly a record, but it’s also a love song.
The LES Yearbook Project began in 2023, inspired by a yearbook class Mata taught at City-As-School High School, her alma mater, and then a black and white photography course she offered to neighbors and her students at the Lower Eastside Girls Club. “I took over a mobile airstream darkroom, an open-door space where neighbors would stop by, share stories about the neighborhood, and reflect on how much it changed,” she said. “That experience inspired the foundation of the project.” In the airstream, she connected with Rosa Lee Rodriguez, Nadia Ramnarine, and Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias, neighbors, friends, and artists with whom she’d discuss the area’s hypergentrification and the risk of NYCHA’s impending privatization. To defend and memorialize their rapidly changing home, they opted to make a collaborative yearbook, one that would, Mata explained, “honor the legacy and spirit of public housing residents here on the Lower East Side. It’d be a testament to us just being here — being heard and remembered.” They distributed flyers (“Calling All NYCHA Residents: Share Your Story, Share Your Roots!”) around the neighborhood, and Mata hosted workshops, inviting LES residents to share their personal histories, family photographs, and memories.
Cheryl Kirwan, Untitled (2001), archival pigment print (photo courtesy the artist)
Making the yearbook put Mata in closer contact with her neighbors. The completed first edition, made with the support of a collaborative yearbook committee, combines their collages, archival photos, and love notes to the place with Mata’s portraits, lovingly tracking the LES’s history (as well as introducing each contributor). A Living Archive brings its pages to life, with images and thematic excerpts placed in a gallery context. The monumentality of NYCHA’s buildings is alluded to immediately at the exhibition’s entrance, with a wall-sized vinyl of Mata’s “Brick by Brick” (2023), a black and white photograph of the Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and Baruch Houses, shot from above. It’s overlaid with a small image of yearbook contributor Cheryl Kirwan, shared from her own archives — a reflection of the project’s collaborative approach. It’s 1981, and she’s dressed impeccably in canary yellow, beaming.
The display upstairs features contributions by yearbook participants and a few architectural motifs that recur throughout the project, including hallways, benches, and doors. There’s a row of photographs of busy city benches over the decades, drawn from the photographers’ archives. An actual city bench, tagged by artists Al Diaz and Charlie Doves, sits across from filmmaker Aicha Cherif’s short documentary, “HEAT” (2025), a portrait of three LES women facing the privatization of their homes. There are images by Kirwan, Maria Amaro, Zakaria Fofana, and other contributors of friends, families, and building residents posing in stairwells and entryways, illustrating the way apartment life, especially in NYCHA housing, encourages private spaces to expand into public areas. The living room, and the family who occupies it, extends beyond the door — speaking of which, a burgundy one, with a peephole you can look through to see more images, is also on view as part of Mata’s The Doors of NYCHA (2020) series. During the early days of the pandemic, Mata delivered groceries with the Baruch Houses Tenants Association Pantry; she’d spend idle time waiting for her neighbors to open their doors, which were decorated with holiday decorations, notes (“PRESS HERE”), or doodles. “I found myself learning about [my neighbors] through the unique ways they’d decorated, before I even met them,” she said.
Cheryl Kirwan, “Hipolina (Polo) Gomez” (1982), archival pigment print (photo courtesy the artist)
Mata’s experience with the Tenants Association prompted her to learn more about the privatization of NYCHA under the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) initiatives. According to Save Section 9, a tenant-led coalition, RAD conversion and private management have increased the cost of utility bills, limited access to repairs, and removed succession rights. Developments under private management experienced six times as many eviction attempts, with overall eviction rates three times higher than the average. The yearbook features images from protests led by NYCHA residents, their signs and masks emblazoned with calls to action and warnings: “Give NYCHA the money,” “Public Housing is on Life Support.” The show itself, said Mata, is not merely about love, but also advocacy.
The former might be the best catalyst for the latter. Along Abrons’s walls are vinyl phrases, part of a piece entitled Love Letter to the LES (2023–25), by various contributors; they’re drawn from both the yearbook and its attendant workshops. These are the words of the people who care for and shape the LES, and who, if able to stay there, will continue to nurture it best. “We come together as a community,” the notes read. “Thank you, L.E.S., for making me a champion and not a loser.” “When I think of family, it’s you I think of.”
Destiny Mata, “Halloween: The Doors of NYCHA” (2020), archival pigment print (photo courtesy Abrons Art Center)
Destiny Mata, “Brick by Brick” (2023), adhesive vinyl
