New York, Now
I hired a coach recently to help sort through my work. We talked about my approach to art and what motivated me to tell stories through my photographs. She commented on my grandfather’s story, which I shared in a previous blog post, and my current work in New York City. She connected his experience and my own, saying something like, of course, your work is about New York City during a pandemic. It’s part of your genetic history.
I got goosebumps when I heard that. My grandfather came to this country as a survivor of the influenza pandemic 100 years ago. The virus killed his family, and he came to New York, a child with no English starting a life with a family he did not know.
Of course.
We were both survivors of a pandemic in New York City, making sense of a changing world. And as my pandemic raged around me and the city went strangely, beautifully, and ominously quiet, I took out my camera and roamed around.
Looking at the work through these eyes, I feel the deeper histories at work in my images. They have more meaning in this context; the emotions of each frame tug at my heart a little more than they did. In hindsight, I realized that I needed New York, too.