“The Lower East Side: Selections from the ICP Collection”

Today, the Lower East Side is synonymous with hip restaurants, cool art galleries and ever-encroaching luxury residences. But as it’s cramped tenement buildings attest, it was once the first stop for immigrants coming to America with aspirations for a better life. Now, the International Center of Photography is inaugurating its new home at Essex Crossing in the heart of the LES with a show of historical photos that look back on the Lower East Side of yore. Images by legends such as Weegee and Jacob Riis are just some of the contibutions capturing the poverty and promise that defined the LES.