



1 / 16 Chevron Chevron Photograph by Ash Thayer “Residents of Fifth Street Squat Playing Four Square,” Fifth Street Squat, 1995.

In 1992, Ash Thayer, a self-described punk girl from Memphis, Tennessee, moved to New York City to attend art school. Unable to make rent on an Upper East Side apartment and kicked out of a subsequent place in Brooklyn, she learned from an acquaintance about a new kind of living arrangement: squatting. In the following years, Thayer made a home with other young punks residing in abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side. Her new book of photos from that period, “Kill City,” celebrates a defiant lifestyle of minimal electricity, D.I.Y. construction projects, and dumpster diving. In the book’s prologue, she writes, “Together, my fellow squatters and I crafted a life out of New York City’s throwaways.”