Chinatown, old and new

Want to see and shoot New York’s iconic Chinatown with a fresh set of eyes? Join award-winning street photographer Dimitri Mellos, whose work on Chinatown over the years has featured on LensCulture, the Leica Blog, and is soon coming out in a book.

New York City’s Chinatown is arguably just about the only neighborhood in Manhattan that still retains some of the atmosphere of old New York, a city that was much less gentrified and much more down-to-earth. Partly due to its geographical overlap with parts of the Lower East Side, today’s Chinatown is uncannily reminiscent of the immigrant neighborhoods of a century ago, allowing us to imagine what it must have been like on those crowded streets we see in old photographs. In this part of town, recent immigrants are still making a new home in America—in many of the same tenement buildings that housed generations of past immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.

Why you should take this experience:

• Get insights and incisive reflections from Dimitri who has been walking the streets of Chinatown for years, as well as watch him in action
• Discover some of the more authentic and less frequented sections of Chinatown straying away from the regular tourist path

Who is this experience for:

NYC visitors and locals alike who are interested in people and street photography, Asian cultures and in learning what old New York was really like.

Key highlights:

• Explore the less touristy parts of Chinatown beyond Doyers and Pell Street
• Learn about Chinatown’s past, origins and how the neighborhood is evolving with a new generation of immigrants from China’s Fujian province
• Let Dimitri show you his favorite hole in the wall eateries, street intersections with a magical interplay of light and shadow, and where some of his most notable images were captured
• If interested, get feedback on your images at the end of the session