Since Jacob Riis first took photos of the slums on Mulberry Street in the 1890s, artists and reformers have used the Lower East Side to make social statements about the people who lived there. In the late 1930s, a young photographer named Rebecca Lepkoff simply went out into the streets and took pictures of the people she saw. Her book, LIFE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE, provides an unusually clear window into what the neighborhood was like when she was young.

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