Sid Kaplan has been using his camera to chronicle the continual urban cycle of destruction & creation in New York City for the last 65 years and calls his life’s work “The Vanishing New York.” The photos that were selected and used for FARFALLEN, Remnants of the Jewish Lower East Side are accompanied not by Marcus’s usual hand drawn artwork but his poetry. Utilizing Kaplan’s photos as inspiration, Marcus’s playfully sentimental poems use a haiku structure to accompany Sid Kaplan’s stunning and intriguing visuals to add a few more words to Kaplan‘s pictures’ of a thousand words. This creative duo brings the past to life, sparking fond memories of the good old days by fanning the flames of hope and spinning tales of survival in a vanishing New York.

Written and Designed by Steve Marcus

Photos by Sid Kaplan