CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/26/2020

Memorial Day weekend inspiration in 'Susan Meiselas: Tar Beach'

At last, Memorial Day weekend is upon us, and after this excruciatingly long and strange year, we are ready to shout to the rooftops and celebrate! Featured image is reproduced from Tar Beach: Life on the Rooftops of Little Italy 1920–75, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas' infectious recent collection of mid-century found family photographs from the rooftops of New York's Little Italy. "The roof was many things," Martin Scorsese writes in his Introduction. "It was where people raised and trained pigeons, like Brando in the Kazan picture. It was where romances happened. There were even weddings on the roof. I tried to recreate one of them in the home movie section of Raging Bull, and the roof is there in Mean Streets and in my first feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door?
The roof was our escape hatch and it was our sanctuary. The endless crowds, the filth and the grime, the constant noise, the chaos, the claustrophobia, the non-stop motion of everything … you would walk up that flight of stairs, open the door, and you were above it all. You could breathe. You could dream. You could be."