Between 1981 and 1994, the photographer Meryl Meisler worked as an art teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at Roland Hayes Intermediate School 291. In a new book, “New York: PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco,” out in June, she collects photos that she took of her students and colleagues during those years—the Menudo fans, the puppy love, the cafeteria jousting, the sneaker style, and a bit of teacher trash-talking. “The students were on the pulse of popular culture, exuded youthful pride, and could challenge one’s wits,” she said recently. Meisler (who’d previously photographed the disco scene and her own family on Long Island) eventually moved to a school in Manhattan, where she continued to teach—and take pictures—until 2010. Her photography from three decades inside the city’s public schools is her largest unseen body of work. “I still get teacher nightmares,” she said.
—The New Yorker
