Playing Telephone with History

Armed with only a list of addresses, a photographer explores her family's legacy in Staten Island through the lens of what lies there now.

Photos by Tara Israel

I spent the summer of 2012 exploring Staten Island’s North Shore, where four generations of my family lived from the late 1800s until 1965. Working off of a list of addresses that were significant to my family, I abandoned the idea of recreating history and instead photographed whatever or whomever currently occupies those spaces. From Chinese restaurants to Baptist churches, the juxtaposition of historical and contemporary photos allowed me to play telephone with history, revealing the area’s nuanced shifts in religion, economics and ethnicity over the past century.