Words by Alexandra Ginzberg. Photos by Lara Ohl
Shot in New Yorks neighbourhood Brighton Beach, this documentary photo project centers on the community of Russian, Ukrainian, and Eastern European immigrants who arrived beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s. It explores a world within a world with intimacy and curiosity - using portraiture, street photography, and close attention to environmental detail. It traces a neighborhood suspended between decay and glamour, a community defined by style, pride, and resilience, and an immigrant enclave that has shaped—and continues to shape—its own evolving mythology. The photo series spotlights individuals who carry decades of cultural memory in the way they walk, dress, and gesture. They reveal a community both distanced and deeply connected — one that maintains a distinct identity even as the tides of New York City shift around it. At Brighton Beach you will find a mix of nostalgia, suspicion, pride, and humor.
In South Brooklyn where the neighbourhoods of Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay and Ocean Parkway intersect in a blend of ethnicities languages and cultures; the people are tough resilient and more than a little stubborn. Brighton Beach can feel as tough as the 1970s never ended — its streets, stores, and elevated trains reminiscent of the New York immortalized in the movies The French Connection, The Warriors and Anora. Why does it feel so untouched by the city’s transformation? What is it about this enclave that resists change, even as the rest of Brooklyn gentrifies beyond recognition?
Women and men dressed to the nines for nothing more than a slow boardwalk stroll, a grocery run, or a quick chat with friends on a windy afternoon. As the sun sets over Jamaica Bay, the boardwalk becomes a runway. Soft amber light illuminates gold jewelry, glossy lips, and brightly fabrics fluttering in the ocean breeze. This is the heart of Brighton Beach: a place where the day might be dull, but the people never are.
Here, Brooklyn’s beautiful ugliness meets a community devoted to flair. Sequins, big hair, big makeup, big sunglasses — echoed by the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s styles that still pulse through the neighborhood like a preserved fashion timeline. As New York continues to evolve at breakneck
speed, Brighton Beach remains one of the few neighborhoods that feels rooted in its past. This series captures that rare quality before it slips away — documenting the textures, personalities, fashion, and emotional landscapes of a place that stands still, not out of stagnation, but out of sheer will.
