Between Dreams and History

New York City,1998

Video Documentation

Image Gallery

For Between Dreams and History, I wanted to give visual form to the personal and collective memories and imaginings of residents of the Lower East Side. I interviewed 75 long time residents from diverse ethnic backgrounds and age groups who were generous and trusting enough to share their memories. They wrote down their favorite childhood songs, poems, sleeping dreams, wishes, night time prayers, intuitions, and memories of the neighborhood from their youth.

Using computers and lasers, excerpts from these texts were then actually written out in blue laser light -in English, Chinese, Yiddish, and Spanish- over a several week period, inscribing the architecture of the neighborhood with the handwritten memories of its residents.

During the project's run, I took long exposure night-time color photographs which are pictured in the enclosed slides.

Shimon Attie