Ginette has been living in the East Village for 46 years in the same rent-controlled apartment, surrounded by foraged and forgotten treasures she has collected on the street. Ginette has become dangerously frail, her infirmity and pain acting to confine her and severely limit her ability to do the things she loves most: take walks through her beloved East Village, and socialize with the kaleidoscope of people who live and work in the neighborhood. She has recently suffered the loss of two pets, a dog and a cat, and these losses precipitated a steep decline in her health. She was born in Switzerland and survived a childhood characterized by severe abuse. Ginette has many stories to tell, fact and fiction blending and blurring into a beautiful poem of her life of great loss and adventure. She is rarely looked in on, surrounded by a gentrifying neighborhood and unable to care for herself, relying on old friends for some basic necessities. She suffers from chronic, excruciating pain as a result of pancreatic disease as well as pleurisy and a degenerative bone disorder. She is sometimes bedridden for days, unable to leave her apartment or care for her own basic needs. She is staunchly independent and refuses most offers of help. Her life of isolation and pain when confined to her apartment is starkly contrasted with the joy she radiates when she is able to make her way down two steep flights of stairs into the outside world.
Images created using the Fujifilm X100V, with a few exceptions, notated.