‘Locals Only’ captures growing up in New York City

Photos and interview by Stacie Joy

East Village resident Irene Mok has spent years photographing the people and places around her — often without realizing she was creating an archive of growing up in New York City. 

Those images, paired with personal essays and Mok's graphic design, became "Locals Only," a self-published, 384-page coffee table book centered largely on the East Village, Lower East Side and Chinatown. 

The project began as her senior-year capstone for CondéFuture, a two-year mentorship program for high school students interested in media. Mok, who also works in the neighborhood, is now a second-year student at Parsons School of Design, where she studies strategic design and management. 

In the following Q&A, she discusses how "Locals Only" evolved, the friends and neighbors who became part of it, and why the ordinary moments of growing up in New York proved worth preserving. 

Can you tell us a bit about how this self-published coffee-table book came to be? How did it evolve?

"Locals Only" started as a rough idea. Through CondéFuture, I was asked to choose a creative project that I would work on throughout my senior year and eventually present at the end of the program as my independent capstone. 

As a graphic designer, I knew I wanted to make a coffee-table book because it would let me experiment with different design styles, but I had no idea what the book would be about. 

Then I realized the subject was right in front of me: the people around me. I had already accumulated tens of thousands of photos, many of them taken on a little Canon PowerShot I had "borrowed" from my parents. I started going through those images and realized I had been documenting my own experience of growing up in New York without really thinking about it. 

I decided to build the book around that and show how New York teens actually live. What began as a CondéFuture project eventually became a 384-page book and a living archive of the people, places and memories that shaped that period of my life. 

Now that I'm at Parsons, studying strategic design and management, I can see how much the project influenced the way I think about photography and graphic design.

What was the process like documenting and creating the work? Had you always planned on showcasing your photography, personal essays and graphic design style this way? 

The process was very much built as I went. I started by picking photographs that felt like they told a story, then built layouts around them and worried about organization later. There wasn't really a strict style guide besides the body copy and names. 

Everything else was designed based on what felt right for the photographs. Every page became an opportunity to experiment with typography, layouts, images and different visual styles. I also wanted to contextualize the photographs rather than just put them on a page and leave them alone. That's where the writing came in. 

When I first started writing, I tried to keep everything neutral, almost like I was documenting the city objectively. Eventually I realized that the stories I wanted to tell only really made sense coming from my own perspective. 

The book isn’t meant to be a definitive guide to New York, and it definitely doesn't cover everything. New York is too big, but it's just my version of it. 

You mention wanting to show how realistic depictions of New York City differ from movie representations. How does being an East Village resident affect and inform your work?

One thing I really noticed after meeting people from other parts of the country and the world is how unique New York teenagers are. There are so many things about growing up here that you don't realize are specific to New York until you meet someone who didn't grow up here.

I wanted to show the city through those everyday experiences: taking an hour-long subway ride to school, hanging out in one specific park with that one group of people, going on extremely long walks and so much more. 

Being surrounded by that every day made it difficult to see it as something worth documenting at first. It was just a normal life. But once I started photographing it, I realized how much meaning there was in those ordinary moments.

What was it like as an artist to include your friends and neighbors in your work? What has the response been like since the work went live? 

The people in the book are really what made the project possible. That's one of my favorite parts of the project; the people I photographed became collaborators in the book without necessarily realizing it. They let me photograph them, tell their stories and turn our experiences into something permanent. 

The response has been really meaningful because the book isn't just about my memories. It's also about memories we made together. I hope the people who are in it can look back at the photographs and remember not just what they looked like, but what that moment actually felt like.

Favorite people or places to photograph? Is there something in the book that really stands out to you as a special moment? 

I don't think I have one specific favorite person or place. I'm most drawn to moments that felt spontaneous. The entire project is special to me because it became a way of freezing a period of my life that was constantly changing. 

It's basically a time capsule. I can look at a photograph and immediately remember where I was, who I was with, what we were doing and what was happening in my life at the time. That's something I don't think I could have captured through writing alone. 

The biggest thing I want people to understand about "Locals Only" is that it was never meant to be perfect. It can definitely get a little confusing and there might be a little mistake here and there, and there isn't one consistent visual style, but there isn't one objective story about New York. 

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You can follow the artist and order a copy of the book @irenemokwork.