George Carrano

I think I've always been attracted to photography, going back to growing-up on the mean streets of the Bronx with my Brownie Hawkeye camera in-hand capturing the real world around me. In photographs, I saw things as if for the first time.

My experience with the city's housing projects began when I started work at the NYCTA/MaBSTOA bus depot at 132nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan, directly across the street from the Manhattanville projects. I would walk through the projects often. It was like small town America in many ways. People would smile when passing one another. Fifty blocks south, a smile or eye-contact would label you as deranged.