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Fishmarket Recalled In Seaport Show
But to Bobby DiGregorio, Mensch’s photographs weren’t abstract art works requiring fancy speeches. “See that guy? That’s Albino,” he said, pointing to a gripping portrait of a man in a rubber apron staring at the camera with a fish in each hand. “The thing I remember most about him is when this other guy hit him over the head with a shovel, his head went ‘Bing!’” He paused as one of the oral histories A photo of DiGregorio himself—or “Bobby Reliable,” as he was known on South Street—hung nearby. In the picture he is filleting a shad, one of a number of jobs he held at the market, where he worked for 33 years. “It was a special place,” he said. “The saloons and the boats, the men and the fights and the fish. It was great!” He now works at the market’s new location in the Bronx, where it moved in 2005. “I might as well be selling shoes,” he said. “It’s like a Home Depot or something.” It was to preserve something of the world that DiGregorio describes that Barbara Mensch first ventured into the fish market in 1979. It was a tense time, with the market under investigation for mob control and the pressures of gentrification beginning to encroach. No one was inclined to be friendly to a woman with a camera.
“In hindsight,” she told the crowd, “the story of South Street wasn’t really about fish.” Mensch spoke of loyalty, respect, the sense of depth of character and conviction that she saw in the people she came to know there. “If you fast forward to the world we live in now, I don’t think we see that richness,” she said. DiGregorio, for his part, has nothing but respect for Mensch. “Thank God for Barbara,” he said. “If she didn’t take these photographs, there would just be a couple of us old-timers with our memories.” Barbara Mensch’s photos are on display through December. For information on the show and programs this month, go to southstreetseaportmuseum.org or call 212-748-8600.
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