Racioppo’s ‘Brooklyn Before’.Racioppo's Brooklyn BeforeSouth Brooklynite photographer Larry Racioppo has watched his borough change tremendously since he began shooting it in the 1970s and ’80s. From Park Slope to Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park, to look at Racioppo’s black-and-white photographs is to catch a glimpse of a bygone Brooklyn — before gentrification, before multimillion-dollar homes and SoulCycles became the norm. Flipping through his new book “Brooklyn Before: Photographs 1971-1983” (Three Hills), out now, you’ll find working-class families — many of them Italian-American, Irish-American and Puerto Rican — gathering after church, kids playing on sidewalks, children celebrating their First Communion, tie-clad candy-shop owners, old people hanging out on stoops. The book includes 128 photos, alongside essays by writer Tom Robbins and art critic Julia Van Haaften. Together, they paint a moving portrait of a vanished world.
The Tabla Rasa Gallery will host an exhibition of Racioppo’s photos from Sept. 29-Oct. 27, 224 48th St., Brooklyn, including a book signing on Sept. 29 at 3 p.m.
