Nostalgia for a Bridgeport we actually remember

"Vincent," Jay Misencik

Think of Bridgeport history and we think of a lost world of street cars, department stores and movie palaces.  It’s the more recent Bridgeport — gritty and just slightly fading — that many of us actually remember. It’s the city between renaissances, somewhere in the netherworld between the Pink Elephant and Two Boots.

You can be under 50 and remember Vincent from the barber shop, or Bill the shoe-shine man, or Gene the traffic cop, or the Broad Street Diner, which was the only dining option around in the late 1970s.  (Now it’s the parking lot for Cohen & Wolf, whose lawyers have lots of good lunch or dinner choices.)

Peter Tepper’s “Diner,” a large scale photograph, takes you back to a not-so-long-ago time. The prices and selection scrawled on the menu board betray the era. Jell-O for 95 cents?

In all, work from six local photographers is about to be revealed a group show at City Lights. ART/BPT/2012: ALL PHOTOS opens Jan. 12 and runs through Feb. 10, 2012.

Misencik has documented Bridgpeport’s people, landmarks and soul for the past 30 years; Tepper grew up in the Hollow and learned photography in the Army in the 1950s.

Yves Francois Wilson, Michelle Beaulieu, Yolanda Vasquez Petrolcelli and Pete Finch are also in the group show.