Justice
The Life of a 1990s Manhattan Squatter
Ash Thayer moved to Manhattan to become a photographer. Her community became her subject.
Ash Thayer moved from Memphis to Manhattan in the early 1990s with dreams of becoming a photographer. Living off part-time work and student loans while attending The School of Visual Arts, Thayer mostly squatted on the Lower East Side. Over time, she developed a deep connection with the community that took her in. That relationship comes through in "This Land," a photography project Thayer shot between 1992 and 1999.
Thayer describes herself as someone who "was really into punk, metal, and thrasher music and anything experimental," and her shots represent the community she came of age with, a group of outsider 20-somethings who sought financial and cultural refuge on the LES at the "tail end of an era."