Faces of Haverstraw

Ken Karlewicz

 A white guy with a camera stands out like a cop in a neighborhood like Haverstraw N.Y., and to many people in town here, that’s mostly what they thought of me, when I started making photograph’s here in the summer of 1999.   “Yo that Nigga’s a cop, they’d shout, yelling questions and comment’s which expressed their disapproval of my wanting to photograph their town, their community, and their people.

Though it took some time, I eventually caught up with the rhythm of this predominantly black and Hispanic community, rekindling old friendship’s and fostering new one’s, in the same streets where I had run as a teen, more than 30 years ago.

 What started out as a visual curiosity and artistic appreciation for the texture and color of   an urban landscape and it’s people, quickly became an understanding of the urgency in documenting a neighborhood which would soon no longer be.  Significant change was on the horizon for the people here in this historic and weathered riverfront village as a large-scale revitalization  / gentrification plan was beginning to unfold.

 New shops boutiques and restaurants began to appear along with for rent and for sale sign’s on buildings and homes around town, along with an 850-unit luxury townhouse complex which is currently under construction along the town’s eastern waterfront on the west bank of the Hudson, here 25 miles north of Manhattan.

 In the five years that I have been photographing the “Faces of Haverstraw”, I have become the witness for what is, recording the everyday actuality of a people, at a particular place in its twilight. 

 There are more than 7000 Hispanic people living in Haverstraw including Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans, Chileans, Argentineans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans.

 Dramatic storm clouds of change hang thick in the air above Haverstraw’s Hispanic population, and it is my hope that the photographs in this essay will serve as a tribute to and an acknowledgement of, the resilient and enduring spirit of its people.

 Ken Karlewicz is a freelance documentary photographer who currently lives in Haverstraw N.Y. He has won numerous awards including the Nikon Award Of Excellence from The Missouri School Of Journalism.