The year we would all rather forget, the year from hell, the year of shock and loss and pain is nearing its end. With vaccines and a new president, change is in the air for 2021.
















The year we would all rather forget, the year from hell, the year of shock and loss and pain is nearing its end. With vaccines and a new president, change is in the air for 2021.
Everything is different this year, but the quintessential feature of Christmas in New York is still the tree in Rockefeller Center. Crowds were strictly limited, tourists were absent, but visitors still found joy at the beautiful sight.
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is usually a lively neighborhood of young people, bars, restaurants, street art, and shopping. Not in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic, not even on the last Sunday before Christmas. Rivington Street was bleak with most restaurants and storefronts closed and shuttered. In the spirit of the neighborhood, murals decorate the metal shutters. We need our government to support small businesses or all of the remaining restaurants will disappear.
The election is over, and with it the elation that erupted on the streets of New York. These two photos of stores on Broadway on the Upper West Side of New York were taken on the afternoon of Election Day. One shows a shuttered storefront of a business that closed permanently during the pandemic. The other survives, selling cleaning supplies, masks, and gloves that were impossible to find during the early months of the pandemic. Together, the two photographs show the challenges that lie ahead for the Biden administration in the coming months and years: control of Covid and repairing the economy.
On Saturday, November 7, 2020 New Yorkers poured into the streets to celebrate the news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the election. Today, nearly a week later, Biden and Harris are projected to win 306 electoral votes, well over the 270 needed.
My photograph of a Manhattan doorman saluting front line workers of the pandemic with a spoon and pan is now on exhibit at the International Center of Photography, 79 Essex Street, New York. I am proud and honored to have my work shown together with so many amazing photographers from all over the world. The exhibit is online at icpconcerned.icp.org
More of the most memorable faces I have seen in New York in this pandemic year. Somehow, people express their essence even while wearing a mask.
Looking back over 2020 so far, these are some of the faces that have stayed in my mind the most after many months of photographing New Yorkers.
Memorials to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sprang up all over New York City, including at her alma mater Columbia University.
People left flowers and notes for Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the statue of Alma Mater on the Columbia University campus
The iconic statue of Alma Mater on the steps of Low Library, Columbia University with a sign saying “When There Are Nine.” That was Justice Ginsburg’s answer to a question about when there would be enough women on the Supreme Court.
In spite of the heat wave, New Yorkers were thrilled to return to the Bronx Zoo after it had been closed since March due to the pandemic. They say the animals noticed the absence of people, and the zoo staff was definitely happy to see the public again and thanked visitors repeatedly. We heard sea lions barking, peacocks screaming, and strangest of all, the loud groans of a giant tortoise that sounded like the dragon Fafner in the Wagner opera Siegfried.