Captivated by New York City’s Lower East Side

This is a remarkable pictorial documentary by the acclaimed Japanese photographer Q. Sakamaki, a reminiscence about his own early days in New York City. Upon arriving in the city in 1986, he moved to the East Village, where he was alternately charmed and horrified by what he saw. Most surprising to him was the huge number of people who were living on the sidewalks.

Before long he was drawn to Tompkins Square Park, which was then the East Village's central gathering spot, where he found a lively mix of people. There were law students, punks, poets and older, lifelong residents who could remember the days of the New Deal.

Twenty years ago this week the neighborhood was also much like a war zone as protesters clashed with police officers seeking to enforce a curfew in the park. “This [work] focuses on Tompkins Square Park as the symbol and stronghold of the anti-gentrification movement, the scene of one of the most important political and avant-garde movements in New York history,” Mr. Sakamaki explains.

The documentary is both an homage and a farewell to a lost place and lost people, displaced by rapid and often greedy gentrification.

Stunning photographs and wonderful video-slideshow of Mr. Sakamaki's pictorial documentary (with music by Nick Drake) are included.