The sidewalk food vendor is a ubiquitous piece of New York’s cityscape. Mobile fruit and vegetable carts have long been an important component of the complex infrastructure that keeps New Yorkers fed, providing fresh produce to stock many of the city's tables.

Today, the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables is increasingly seen as a pressing urban issue as the relationship between diet and health becomes better understood. Food-related illnesses like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are on the rise, particularly in many neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs where ready access to healthy food in stores is limited. The city has employed a variety of strategies to address this problem, from education to farmers’ markets that have brought fresh local produce in season to more than 50 locations throughout the five boroughs. In 2008, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene confronted this issue with an innovative program that simultaneously tackles questions of diet, health, employment, entrepreneurship, and food supply. The NYC Green Cart program issues licenses and permits for 1,000 mobile food carts appointed for specially designated zones throughout the city where access to and consumption of fruits and vegetables is low—neighborhoods where at least 12 percent of adults reported that they did not eat any fruits or vegetables on the previous day. The initiative also promotes business ownership by providing micro-loans to qualified vendors, and the Green Cart program has developed marketing and educational materials,including cookbooks, expressly for the communities served by the vendors.

In 2009, Aperture Foundation, in partnership with the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which also supported the creation of the Green Cart Program, commissioned five New York based, emerging photographers—LaToya Ruby Frazier, Thomas Holton, Gabriele Stabile, Will Steacy, and Shen Wei—to document the program and its impact on the city. Over the course of a year, they have produced new work by employing a variety of approaches from still-life to street photography. Their projects include Frazier’s street portraits of the Green Cart vendors and customers; Holton’s documentation of the life of a group of Bengali immigrant vendors; Wei’s series of still-life photographs that highlight the labeling and packaging of the fruits and vegetables; Stabile’s study of the interactions of people and food from market to table; and Steacy’s exploration of the existing food choices in the surrounding urban environment. The photographs reveal the communities where the carts are open for business, the struggles and opportunities of the entrepreneurial vendors, their interactions with their customers, and how thefoods they sell are ultimately usedby families—evidence of a positive and potentially lasting effect on the health of the city.

An exhibition of this work is on display at the Museum of the City of New York from March 22 through September 5, 2011.

View the Artists:

LaToya Ruby Frazier
Thomas Holton
Gabriele Stabile
Will Steacy
Shen Wei

Artist Slideshow