"The East Village Then & Now" Photo Book Launch with Daniel Root

See how this Manhattan neighborhood has changed over the past 40 years!

 

Thursday, April 30, 2026, 6PM-7PM

*Book Here 

 

Talk Highlights:

Peek inside the new photo book, The East Village Then & Now, and see the same locations 40 years apart as captured by Daniel Root, who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1980s

 

Then: View photos of:

-a young Madonna filming Desperately Seeking Susan

-the storefront galleries of the East Village art scene

-Life Cafe, where Jonathan Larson would write—and set—Rent

-punks hanging out on St. Marks Place

-retirees playing chess in Tompkins Square Park

 

Now: Analyze how the neighborhood as change as we look at newly shot photos of:

-rebuilt or new apartment buildings

-greener streets with sidewalk trees and thriving community gardens

-NYU dorms and campus buildings, and the students that fill them

-blocks still filled with an impressive array of cuisines, like Veselka’s beloved Ukrainian dishes to Ethiopian, Korean, or Punjabi fare

 

Despite the vast changes, the neighborhood was, and is, a vibrant, eccentric, multi-cultural nexus for artistic and counter-culture endeavors!

 

About this Virtual Talk:

Join photographer Daniel Root (New York Bars at Dawn) for a closer look at one of New York City’s most creative and eclectic neighborhoods, the East Village, as he shares images from his new photo book, The East Village Then & Now.

 

About Daniel Root:

Daniel Root is a fine art photographer and a principal in the visual arts firm The Root Group. His popular predawn photographs of Manhattan water holes were collected in the book New York Bars at Dawn (Abbeville). You can find his daily photos, a practice he’s now maintained for a decade, on Instagram at @danielrootphotography. Root has lived in the East Village since the early 1980s.

 

 

The East Village Then and Now

by Daniel Root (Author), Bill Morgan (Introduction), Peter McGough (Foreword)

May 12, 2026

 

An exciting and essential record of downtown Manhattan―iconic street scenes captured from the same vantage point in 1980s and today

 

When photographer Daniel Root moved to the East Village in the early 1980s, this constantly changing neighborhood was in one of its periods of greatest ferment. Multiple immigrant groups maintained enclaves there―including Ukrainians, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Dominicans, and Poles―even as drug dealers plied their trade in abandoned buildings and young artists flooded in looking for cheap rents, followed close behind by real estate speculators. Through his lens, Root captured a young Madonna filming Desperately Seeking Susan on St. Mark’s Place; the storefront galleries of the East Village art scene; Life Cafe, where Jonathan Larson would write―and set―Rent; retirees playing chess in Tompkins Square Park; junkies fleeing the police. Forty years later, Root―still an East Village resident―has returned to the very same places where he took those pictures, to document how the scene has changed.

 

Root’s “then and now” photographs, presented together in this volume along with his wry commentary, document the transformation of a legendary New York neighborhood for better and worse―higher rents, yes, but lower crime; displacement, but also the persistence of community and creativity. A foreword by renowned artist Peter McGough and noted Beat historian Bill Morgan shed further light on the history of the East Village. This will be an essential volume for all downtown denizens, past, present, and future.

 

 

*뉴욕 비밀식당 보헤미안(Bohemian) 테이스팅

*찬바람 부는 가을의 참맛: 이스트빌리지 라쿠(RAKU, 樂)의 버섯 우동(のきのこうどん)

*이스트빌리지 맛집 트리오: 우동 웨스트, 자파스 핫도그(*폐업), 데이비스 아이스크림

*이스트빌리지 맛집 가이드 (2)  차안, 하스, 라멘 미소야, 브릭레인 커리하우스, 베니에로