American artist Angela Cappetta, known for her social realist documentary photography, has released a new photobook titled Glendalis: The Life and World of a Youngest Daughter. Published by Bologna-based L’Artiere Edizioni, the book tells the story of a young Puerto Rican girl growing up in New York City in the 1990s, following her over the course of ten years.

Shot exclusively in the pre-gentrified area of the Lower East Side – a neighbourhood that has long been home to many Latin-American communities – Glendalis captures the titular protagonist in her home, the surrounding streets, and in the bosom of her close-knit family and friends. The photographs depict her navigating the usual formative experiences of adolescence, along with those specific to lower middle class and immigrant upbringings.

In the images, we see Glendalis in her multigenerational tenement house on Stanton Street, which is sparsely decorated and run-down in parts. The building itself is unremarkable, but of course, a family makes a home, and the depth of their bond comes through in the portraits of them together. As such, many of the spaces in the photographs feel warm, welcoming and familiar. This was the case in particular for Cappetta, who says Glendalis’ childhood and home mirror her own to a great extent.

“I was raised within a family system similar to hers, surrounded and embraced by an ever-present cast of relatives and friends,” explains Cappetta. “Like me, she was the youngest, and, much as I did, whispered out in the voice of a last-born – the messenger of a family. This work is informed by my own beginnings. I perceive it as a search for my own girlhood alongside larger themes of family and community; the relationships a person nurtures and how they transform along with us through time.”

Indeed, as you flick through the book, shifts in Glendalis’ relationship to her surroundings and the people in her life become apparent. We even sense a shift in the way she holds and regards herself, as the carefree, performative spirit of her early years gives way to more pensive and, at times, guarded displays.

Writing in one of the book’s essays, actress Luna Lauren Vélez notes: “The thing that strikes me the most about these photos, though, is Glendalis’ spirit – how they allow us to experience her growing from a fierce little girl into a warrior of a young woman. We see her go through rites of passage and can even feel her restlessness as she gets older. Angela has poignantly captured this, never romanticising the difficulty of life in the pre-gentrified Lower East Side.”

As with many projects of this nature, striking the right balance between capturing a “pure, honest, and unvarnished truth”, as Vélez refers to it, and refraining from idealising that reality is important. Undoubtedly, growing up in an impoverished neighbourhood in New York City, as a first generation American, would not be an easy existence, yet there is equal importance in not diminishing the vitality of these subjects.

Reflecting on her own childhood, which she says was reminiscent of Glendalis’, Vélez recalls: “Despite a lack of economic security and other hardships we endured, we thrived. We made our sometimes fraught experiences bearable, and, at times, even magical.”

Similarly, magic in Glendalis’ story can be found on almost every page – precious time spent with parents, grandparents and siblings; the sharing of formative experiences with friends and peers; and the simple fact that, by the end of the book, Glendalis continues to have a powerful presence in front of the lens. “I wanted to provide gentle evidence of compelling lives lived, starting here, with Glendalis and her family,” notes Cappetta. “Thus, this deepening practice over the years has created for me a slow, steady realisation that a youngest daughter possesses an eloquent voice.”

Glendalis: The Life and World of a Youngest Daughter by Angela Cappetta is published by L’Artiere Edizione; lartiere.com