Joseph Wood Papin

The Street Is My Studio Joseph Wood Papin

"East Harlem is one of the world's most densely populated areas, the most overcrowded section of NYC, where 300,000 people live jammed together in little over one square mile. Many of my drawings were done on East 100th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue where 4,000 people are packed into 27 rotting tenements. The people, mostly Puerto Ricans and Negroes just up from the south, struggle for survival in an atmosphere tense with hatred, fear, and discrimination. They are the latest in the waves of immigrants who have settled here in the past 60 years. The strong maintain the struggle; the weak succumb to apathy and despair. Yet even though most of the city finds itself too busy or indifferent to care, I found a group of young ministers and students of the East Harlem Protestant Parish who were living here and working with quiet efficiency to help on every level they could. They present no special claims to righteousness, austerity of life or devotion to principles superior to other men's; rather this group, free of any rigid restricting dogma or methodology, let the problems encountered dictate the solutions" (Joseph Papin, 1958).