Little Italy today is less a neighborhood and more a condensed memory, reduced to a few blocks around Mulberry Street. In the early 20th century, it was one of the largest Italian enclaves outside Italy, formed mainly by immigrants from southern regions — Sicily, Campania, Calabria. Dialects were spoken on the street, food was cheap, buildings were overcrowded, and identity was built collectively, often in opposition to the rest of the city.

After World War II, economic mobility, migration to Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey, and later real-estate pressure caused Little Italy to shrink. What remained became a touristic stage, filled with recognizable symbols: flags, string lights, “traditional” menus, façades preserved almost like theatrical scenery.

Surrounding it, NoLIta (North of Little Italy) emerged as its symbolic opposite: minimalist boutiques, quiet cafés, globalized aesthetics, self-referential consumption. Where Little Italy performs memory, NoLIta performs the present.
Photographing this area today means photographing the friction between what resists and what has already turned into an image of itself.