My City Recently Removed
20.11.2020 - 09.04.2021
I became an artist on the streets of New York, photographing Manhattan, Uptown, Downtown, searching the shadows cast from Frank’s photos and Ginsberg’s poems. I entered this era near its golden apex, via the Holland Tunnel, at the end of the twentieth century, intent to carve a space for myself. Prowling the streets with camera in hand, obsessively snatching up fractions of seconds in service of the unwritten meta-narrative, I was determined to capture the gilded moment or at least some evidence of its passing.
Twenty-five years later: New York at a rare moment of shrinkage and humility, interiors empty and more grand, a city in mourning, a specter of its former self. Every night, a public funeral, solitary figures applauding and weeping at the curb. Every morning sparrow and starling choruses louder than before, as gridlock silently vanishes.
At least 24,000 New Yorkers have been taken by COVID since March, but those numbers are surely undercounted, as many choose to die at home, rather than isolated in overburdened hospitals bursting from the virus. Exhausted hazmat morgue workers stack bagged bodies in cargo containers.
New York is in mourning, but maintains its humor and grit. A cop waves his arm at the entirety of Wall Street and says, “free parking.” The City swells with a dark sense of purpose and ambition, as if pausing between premieres. For now, bicycles and pedestrians rule the roadways, storefronts are boarded, and we gather anxiously, at a distance, faces covered.
I find myself longing for the loud, overbearing, raw spectacle of this place. I miss walking Canal Street with a folded slice of pizza, dodging tourists, palming my camera, slipping through closing doors of the Q train with thousands of others, moshing on a communal tightrope. I miss the rumble beneath my feet and the ubiquity of proudly parading peacocks. I miss the unwashed, bare-bulb brilliance of conversations stretching long past last call.
I set up my tripod on Fifth Avenue before dawn, watching shadows emerge like phantoms, stretching light with time. My city recently removed comes quietly into focus.
Sean Hemmerle19 Nov 2020
