At some point in the year 2000, or perhaps 2001, I set out to walk the length of Fulton Street, one of Brooklyn’s longest, with the intention of photographing every storefront church along the way. I recently rediscovered the snapshots from that walk, or at least some of them. I can’t remember if I ran out of film, and walked the entire length of the street nonetheless, or if I intended to go back and continue, but never did. Perhaps I might have, but lost those photographs. I don’t know. In fact, I don’t “remember” much about the walk that isn’t in the photographs, from one roll of 35mm Tri-X film. Several buildings, I realized when looking at them, had brickface façades.

In August of 2018 I rephotographed the Fulton Street churches. Many have survived, offering hope that faith and community can sometimes confront the economic juggernaut of gentrification. One of these is Monk’s Memorial. While it has survived the Brooklyn boom, its brickface has not.

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