Many people have written me in relation to the NYT article on Willets Point which was published yesterday. The Times assembled a talented team and the photographs are beautiful. But the images misrepresent what happened there and essentially miss the mark journalistically.

I photographed Willets Point during its heyday, back in 2009-2010, when the mechanics didn’t realize yet that the end of their epic, decades-long battle with the city was fast approaching. The work I did is collected in the book YONKEROS, published by La Fabrica Editorial, Madrid, 2013.

Little remains of the Willets Point I loved and knew so well. All of my friends are long gone from the junkyards. And the area is in a sort of twilight zone with the neighborhood renewal project stagnating for years now.

The piece in the Times revisits the few gladiators who are still there, who were too broke and shattered to leave the arena of their defeat.