The derelict past of New York City’s Lower East Side is now but a memory as blocks of abandoned apartment buildings have given way to endless trendy eateries and $2,000 per month studio apartments.

But a photographer who once found herself living among the self-reliant squatters who made their DIY homes in the neighborhood in the 1990s is telling their stories through intimate portraits of the bygone era.

Ash Thayer’s Kill City: Lower East Side Squatters 1992-2000 captures the bohemia as it was: an enclave of derelict buildings taken over by vibrant outcasts who used found materials and gumption to turn the city’s cast-off properties into their homes.

Portrait of an era: Ash Thayer’s book Kill City: Lower East Side Squatters 1992-2000 documents her experiences, and those of her cohorts, as a squatter in the Manhattan of the 1990s. Picture: Meggin and Jill Dancing, Fifth Street Squat, 1996

Squatters: The squatters of the Lower East Side made their homes in buildings long abandoned by the city following the downturn of the 1970s

Demolition days: The squatters used found materials, passed-on know-how and gumption to create homes where once lay only ruins Pictured: Toby on a Demolition Day, Fifth Street Squat, 1994 (left). Beer Olympics I, Williamsburg, 1994 (right)

Thayer herself lived in several LES squats, giving her unique access to people who were generally unwelcoming to outsiders. Pictured: Girl Reading in Doorway of Serenity House, 1997