Photos: Revisiting Manhattan’s Pandemic Emptiness, One Year Later

In May 2020, Gothamist asked me to make the trip to Manhattan to photograph the streets in the midst of the COVID lockdown. “It’s historic,” my editor told me. “This city has never been in this state before.” She was right.

For the fortunate--the vaccinated and gainfully employed of New York City--this dark time is likely fading further into memory. The mood is getting brighter, and I can’t really blame anyone for that, because last Spring was a terrible, traumatizing time. The word “surreal” got used a lot, but walking around Manhattan with its deserted streets and squares really did feel like a trip to some strange and deadly dimension. I remember the dread that came along with walking through long empty stretches of Midtown knowing that the virus surge had already turned every local hospital into hell on earth.

On their most basic level, these pictures are gloomy snapshots of a typically bustling city with hardly anyone around. If you showed them to someone who had slept through all of 2020, they’d probably be confused and unsettled by the emptiness. For me, the unpopulated pictures remind me of the very human cost of the pandemic. Every closed restaurant and store meant many jobs lost. The graffiti thanking nurses meant healthcare workers were dealing with the unthinkable every day. I hope, when New York City is finally back, that we don’t just look at the COVID lockdown as a time when everything was weird, but one when everything was wrong--and that we make changes so that such a tragedy never happens again.

Doyers Street is usually the most photogenic corner in New York with its bright neon signs, dense crowds, and sharp angles. I figured during a pandemic lockdown, it would be starkly empty and sad. I was right.

Mosco Street is another one of Chinatown’s best places to take pictures. There’s usually a crowd of people with dumplings or groceries in hand, and always a few cooks sitting together and smoking. Now, those scenes are back, but in May 2020 the block was deserted.

This picture is of the lobby of a federal building, I think in Lower Manhattan. Seeing Trump and Pence’s glossy, smiling faces look out on a city in lockdown while a deadly virus tore through poor, immigrant, and elderly communities felt grimly appropriate.

It was a terrifying time for restaurants. Seeing the giant EATALY sign still turned on but only a scattered pile of chairs stacked against the window made me all the more worried about whether the industry would ever bounce back. And if it would, which restaurants and workers would be left behind.

Walking around a rainy, emptied-out Manhattan two months into a deadly pandemic was already making me, in a word, edgy. But seeing a team of men in hazmat suits and gas masks file into the New York Stock Exchange raised the day’s horror movie factor to another level. This was my first time seeing that kind of gear in person, as the cleaners prepared to disinfect the stock market trading floor. Now that we know how much wealth CEOs and billionaire investors have amassed during this worldwide recession, I suppose there’s a metaphor to it all.

Since last March, Times Square has been a kind of visual bellwether for the state of the city’s lockdown. In May it was practically empty. Every screen featured bright ads thanking essential workers. And even though almost no one was around to see those corporate messages of human resilience against a public health disaster, I can vouch that McDonald’s, LG, Coca-Cola, and Sunglass Hut were putting out positive vibes in our most desperate hour.

Even though we now know that it’s extremely unlikely you’ll catch COVID outdoors, May 2020 was a completely different time. The old adage “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” went out the window as I did my best to keep away from other people, even on open sidewalks like this one.

I truly never thought I would see Grand Central Terminal like this.