By Katarina Hybenova
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A week before Christmas of 1981, a teaching position opened at Roland Hayes Intermediate School 291. Meryl Meisler says she could only imagine what happened to the teacher before her. “Was the other teacher killed?” she asked herself. Another cause of anxiety for Meryl was the New York Blackout that occurred in the summer of 1977, and its disastrous consequences for Bushwick. “After, images of looting and fires in Bushwick were forever burned into my brain,” Meryl says.
Nevertheless, Meryl Meisler accepted the offer and taught in Bushwick from 1981 to 1994, and she says it was never boring. In February 1982, she found the courage to take photos on her way from the subway to school. She used to carry an inexpensive plastic point and shoot pocket camera loaded with cheap transparency film and developed it in the least costly way possible.
