There’s a certain anonymity that comes with living in a city, an existence so public that it circles back around to private again. Because why would anyone look at you when there are so many other people to look at?I think that’s the way most people across the street feel. It’s dark, the lights in all the apartments are on; it’s easy to see inside, but no one (with one exception) seems to care. I love it—I love people watching, and I love the freedom that comes with leaving my own shades open most of the time. There’s so much life here to share and receive, all these individual universes occurring at once. Unfiltered, just real, every day, often boring, sometimes embarrassing, occasionally sad existence. So unlike social media, which is always always curated. I feel like I actually know these people in their authentic selves better than some of my friends, even though we’ve never spoken. They probably know parts of me that my friends don’t see as well. There’s the man on the top floor whose home is filled with art. Is he a maximalist or is it his partner’s (husband’s?) taste. His partner is usually there but must be out with friends or on business tonight. The couple next door are together but occupying their own spheres—each engaged in their own thing, which, as an introvert, has always been my favorite part of being in a relationship, the ability to have company while being alone. The woman below exercises like this every night. I mean, seven days a week. Sometimes twice in a day! I can’t imagine it but, truly, good for her. I wonder if she has some sort of physical occupation, if this is how she releases stress, or this is a hobby. Her neighbors actually keep the shades closed. It scratches at the nosy part of my brain. What are they up to in there? Are they just that rare breed of private city people? Then there’s the family on the bottom floor. Two young kids. I see them growing up. It feels like every day they get bigger. I feel a tenderness towards them. They are especially cute and handsome - do I think that because I feel like I know them? The are like family. All of my stranger neighbors feel like a strange kind of family to me. Do they feel the same about me?
The building in the picture is my building! I’ve lived there since I moved to Chelsea in 2004, and I made this photo from the pilates studio across the street. When I wrote the text about the neighbors, I did not know many of them well. In making this photo, I have had a chance to connect and ask them more about themselves. I am so grateful for their consent.
My own home in this building is out of view - it was once a belly-dance studio; back when I moved in, the building was filled with artists: a lighting designer, a costume designer, an architect, a painter, a novelist, another photographer. Twenty years later, it’s just one other artist and me left in the building. Originally used for fur manufacturing, this building was part-commercial and part-residential by the time I got here, and now it’s all lofts, with a palm tree store in the lobby—a nod to its location in the historic “Flower District” of Chelsea. In the early 2000s, the block was so stuffed with flowers that I could barely see the sidewalk. But now, many of those shops have turned into hotels (there are five on the block now), many of which advertise the very “flower district” that they have helped to evict. Only a few flower stores and boutiques are still hanging on. I hope they manage to stick around!
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She met her husband on the eve of her twentieth birthday. Then, still feeling more nineteen than twenty, ideas of a family and a station wagon in her driveway never crossed her mind. But a half decade later her (still) boyfriend was about to begin his graduate degree at Princeton, and she hated herself for being surprised by what this meant for her. Of course they were gonna get married, that was always in her mind somewhere, but was she an idiot for thinking she would not have to follow him? She had not applied yet, but she wanted to go to Pratt School of Architecture. She wanted to live with her four girlfriends in a West Village apartment. His proposal brought her back to reality; she would have to make a decision. Suddenly Pratt and the Village apartment seemed like the dream of a naive young girl; it was time to do something real. So, they bought a two bedroom in Princeton, and she was pregnant 16 months later.
Her husband died a year ago and was buried in a New Brunswick Cemetery. She decided to keep the suburban McMansion because she would need somewhere to host her four kids and inevitable grandchildren come Christmas. And, on the days when she particularly misses her husband, she will stay there. With the money she inherited, the West Village was a bit out of her budget, so she settled on a loft in Chelsea. She decorates the new apartment with the furniture and dreams she put in storage long ago.
See next photo.
She’s played the violin for two hours now. She’s almost finished, only she has to get this last measure right. During the lockdown, she used to open the windows and play violin for us in the apartments across the street, we would gather to listen and applaud. They were her best audience, she thinks, even now as she practices to play in Lincoln Center tomorrow for a crowd of over a thousand. Tonight she stops then to listen to the rhythmic clicking of ping pong in the other room. She hears her kids laugh and smack the table and claim the other is cheating while the ball ricochets off the floors and walls. She listens a moment, then lifts up her bow and begins again.
This building and the one in the previous photo stand next to each other, but look like they’re from completely different worlds. They are in fact from completely different time periods, and, to me, they are a reminder of how much the neighborhood has changed. I photographed the modern building ten years before I photographed the older building, but it still looks so much more futuristic. For the woman in that photo, the modern building is an oasis from her home in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, this older building—which was built almost exactly 100 years before the modern building, in 1909—is a building of lofts, filled with artists and musicians like the woman in the photo, who is a famous violinist. Many of the residents moved in when they were young and childless. From the vantage point of the apartment across the street (belonging to a family friend), I’ve watched, for years, as the residents collected furniture and knick-knacks, and as their families grew. The woman in the photo was particularly interesting to me. I’d always imagined her life there with her three boys. Finally, with this project as my inspiration, I was brave enough to ring her bell and ask if I could photograph her. It turns out, our kids are similar ages and, even though we had never met, we had mutual friends. Moments like these remind me that even if people may seem like total strangers, we may end up having more in common than we think.
He’s late, and rushes into the kitchen where he left his phone as he frantically buttons up his shirt. He checks his phone and stares, 4 missed calls. It’s his wife, soon to be ex-wife, and he tries to text her back with one hand while pulling up a sock with the other. His daughter sits on the kitchen counter, legs dangling while she skims over her book, seeming to have no care in the world. Her father, I know, is too embarrassed to tell her about our affair (though I do wonder if she has any idea, any clue). He dashes past her now, heading for the door, when she asks if he could please get her some juice from the fridge.
He pauses by the door, turning to glance at his daughter’s face, wondering if this is some kind of test. She hasn’t even looked up from her book, and he wants to tell her to get it herself. But he also probably feels bad, wants to be nice to her since he hardly sees her when he runs out each morning like this.
So, he walks over to the refrigerator and grabs a brand new pack of grapefruit juice, offering one to his her, trying to smile as if it’s all a-ok. She turns away from her book, looks at the juice, looks at her father. She hates grapefruit juice.
This particular area of Chelsea was a prime shopping destination during the Gilded Age, the period between the 1870s and the late 1890s that was marked by rapid economic growth. The rows of upscale department stores that wealthy New Yorkers visited became known as “Ladies’ Mile,” because it was so fancy and popular that women could shop there safely, unaccompanied by men. In the 20th century, however, the stores that made the area so prosperous—Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany & Co—began to move uptown. After decades of decline, Ladies’ Mile had a new heyday in the 1980s, when new agencies and businesses began moving in. Designated a Historic District in 1989, Ladies’ Mile is still home to many pre-war buildings. Quite a few are now apartments, but commerce has nevertheless returned to the neighborhood in full force. The American Apparel here is just one example—the whole block in this photo is a mall.
I don’t really like knowing much about the people whose windows I see into while I am working along the High Line. This woman keeps her shades open, which I’m grateful for; sometimes, when the shades are closed in this building I get a little worried, like why would someone live here and close their shades? It makes me think something sinister is happening, or at least something I don’t want to know about.
Like last year, I heard a woman scream. It was pretty frightening so I called the security guard on the High Line. He called the building doorman who said to not worry since he often hears screams from that apartment. But an hour later the screaming and the banging started up again. I saw shadows on the window. It looked like a projection of a horror film! This time I called 911 and eventually the police came. They went up, and back down right away—and simply said the screaming was consensual. They reminded me that on the High Line, sometimes people like the attention at their window, and I probably shouldn't call next time.
But this woman is pretty friendly and mostly alone. I am happy to know I probably won’t be tempted to call 911 on her.
Why would someone ever choose to live right along the highline, in one of those new apartments where thousands of tourists can see so easily into their windows every day? I’ve wondered for years. Turns out, this woman rented her place sight-unseen, and didn’t realize what she was getting herself into. Now, she stares at tourists all day and has come to realize that they’re not necessarily paying that much attention to her. I’d love to meet more highline-dwellers ... but super surprisingly, the developers of these buildings, and the real estate agents who sell these apartments, have not been particularly open to my request.
A: Christ, those handprints on the window across the street gave me a freaking jump scare.
B: I know, I thought they were real at first too. I love that they decorated a bit though. I wonder if it was her doing.
A: The girl in the window? God, I almost thought she was another decoration.
B: How old do you think she is?
A: I don’t know, I’m terrible at telling ages. Preteen? Middle school-ish?
B: Do you think she still trick or treats?
A: At that age? Maybe if she has younger siblings that her parents force her to take around or something.
B: I kind of hope she does. I was still trick or treating in middle school! I think I only stopped when I got to high school because people were starting to judge me.
A: Do kids in the city even trick or treat? I never get anyone.
B: Me neither. It feels like everyone’s growing up too fast these days.
A: You sound like your mother.
B: Lord, I do.
A: What’s wrong with being an adult?
B: Nothing’s wrong with it, but we have most of our lives to be adults and only like a decade or two, if we’re lucky, of being kids. You know, before the whimsy’s gone, and we all just sit around on Halloween.
A: Like we’re doing.
B: Exactly.
A: And the people below the blood-splattered apartment.
B: Yes, but, hey, much respect to the guy sitting on the table. He’s at least wearing a sort of costume.
A: Good man. You could have dressed up. Or decorated with murder decals.
B: I should have! The neighbors are inspiring me.
A: Next year.
B: Yeah, and maybe then I’ll get trick or treaters.
A: Maybe even the girl across the street.
When I first discovered this neighborhood in the late '90s, I was on assignment for US Weekly magazine. My task was to photograph the uniforms of the servers at Cafeteria - a super hip cafe that stood out as an oasis in what was then a rather desolate area. The uniforms, intriguingly, were Prada. Cafeteria stood next to the original Barneys of New York, which had opened its doors in 1923. Back then, the 100 West block of 17th Street was a study in contrasts: a mix of gritty urban decay and glimmers of the trendy future to come. Fast forward to today, and the transformation is striking. Now, this once-overlooked stretch has blossomed into a vibrant hub of activity. Yet, amidst the change, the block retains much of its historic charm. The buildings, more than a century old, have interiors converted into artists' lofts while their exteriors maintain their original character. On the right side of the street, one particular building holds a special place in the neighborhood's social fabric. Its residents, who know my children through the local school, inhabit a structure that's a microcosm of the area's eclectic spirit. The ground floor hosts an intriguing mix of businesses: a flower shop, a psychic, and remarkably, the city's last typewriter store. The Gramercy Typewriter Company, in business since 1932 though not always at this location, has been passed down through generations of the Schewitzer family. It's a testament to the area's blend of old and new, even counting Tom Hanks among its clientele. This block, once quiet and neglected, now buzzes with a unique energy that bridges past and present, making it a quintessential slice of evolving New York City life
Chelsea is a special neighborhood to me because it’s my home—the neighborhood where I’ve lived for the past 20 years. There is a gorgeous Historic District with rows of charming brownstones, old pre-war apartment buildings beside modern lofts (see Halloween, Chelsea, Violin), and small shops like the Gramercy Typewriter Company that have been in business since the early 20th century. There is an important commercial district (see American Apparel) which in the Gilded Age of the 1880s was home to some of the country’s first upscale department stores (including Lord & Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany & Co.) and became famous as “Ladies’ Mile,” because it was so popular that women could shop there safely and unaccompanied by men.
And then there is my building (My Neighbors). I live in the historic “Flower District” of Chelsea—there’s still a palm tree store in my lobby—and back in the early 2000s, when I moved in, the block was so stuffed with flowers that I could barely see the sidewalk. At that time, our building, like much of Chelsea, was filled with artists: a lighting designer, a costume designer, an architect, a painter, a novelist, another photographer. Twenty years later, much has changed. In the building, it’s just one other artist and me left, and the management lets me hang my pictures in the nine-floor stairwell, like a mini-gallery. Many of the flower shops have turned into hotels, which advertise the very flower district that they are helping to evict. Only a few flower stores and boutiques are still hanging on. I hope they manage to stick around.
My Chelsea-area photographs show what it means to be present in a place for so long. Over the years, new “neighborhoods” have been coined, like “Union Square,” “Flatiron,” and “NoMad”; two decades ago, I would have just called all of these Chelsea. But the names are less important than my colorful memories of people and experiences that flood back every time I walk these familiar streets.
I remember that there was a couple, Irene and Julie, whose son Max went to camp with my daughter one summer when they were three years old. The bus stop was in front of Old Navy, on 18th and 6th (the fact that they took a bus only 15 blocks was funny in itself—for the kids, the bus ride was more exciting than camp). Years later, my daughter a college student, I ran into Irene and Julie again and learned that Max had passed away from cancer when he was 7. And they were about to sit shiva – the 7-day period of Jewish mourning, usually at home – again, this time for Julie’s mother, who had just passed away. I asked them if I could photograph the intimate, difficult moment through their windows, and they said yes (see Shiva). While I was making the picture from across the street, it was as though I was finally paying my respects to Max, and to his family—a family whose life, like those of so many others, has run parallel to mine, crossing into my view in celebration and in grief, but always in time to remind me that this, indeed, is what it means to call a city home.
