Between 1981 and 1994, the photographer Meryl Meisler labored as an artwork trainer in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at Roland Hayes Intermediate School 291. In a new e book, “New York: PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco,” out in June, she collects photographs that she took of her college students and colleagues throughout these years—the Menudo followers, the pet love, the cafeteria jousting, the sneaker type, and a little bit of trainer trash-talking. “The students were on the pulse of popular culture, exuded youthful pride, and could challenge one’s wits,” she stated just lately. Meisler (who’d beforehand photographed the disco scene and her own family on Long Island) ultimately moved to a faculty in Manhattan, the place she continued to show—and take photos—till 2010. Her images from three many years inside the town’s public faculties is her largest unseen physique of labor. “I still get teacher nightmares,” she stated.
—The New Yorker
