Painted People

You are looking at a collection of mostly portraits taken on the street during a procession/carnival/pageant organized by Earth Celebrations in East Village, New York City, in May of 2001. This procession was part of an ongoing struggle to save gardens that sprang up in abandoned lots during the years when real-estate developers preferred to stay away. Now that this area is desirable again, some people want to build on those abandoned lots and that, in turn, makes other people who like gardens quite unhappy. So they express their unhappiness in various ways, including the organization of joyful and colorful processions.