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I work across the street, mostly alone in my textile company, though I never feel alone. Across the way live a father and his son. There used to be a mother, once—a blur of brown hair, a robe that caught the morning sun—but she’s been gone a long while. I tell myself they must have divorced. I hope that’s all it was.I’ve watched the boy grow up through the seasons of my window: the Lego years, the toy BMW, the hesitant girl who came when the dad was out. The other day he wore a cap and gown, studying himself in the glass. Today it’s a lacrosse uniform.I think it must be his last high school game. Soon he’ll be gone too, and I’ll still be here, the hum of the machines behind me, watching the empty window across the way.
The building now called the "Grand Madison" looks like a historic apartment building, but when I first moved to the neighborhood, it was just starting a renovation to residential use. Previously, the building had served as the main showroom for ceramics, gifts, and glassware.
In fact, this entire corner of 5th Avenue and 26th Street - now home to Eataly and many trendy restaurants - was once filled with non-residential buildings. The Toy Building was next door.
Now the wholesale shops have been replaced by luxury apartments with celebrities. Once, my son was trick or treating in the building and Chelsea Clinton opened the door with her dog and gave out full sized chocolate bars. From this apartment, you can see Jeff Bezos' triplex with its windows on four sides.
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It’s apparently been 700 days since we last had a snow storm. I missed the white calm, that momentary hush before New York kicks back into motion—people going to work, walking dogs, wandering with a lover, mittened hand in mittened hand. Even today, with the snow turning gray and runny, there are still people in Madison Square Park. Kids flying down freezing slides, adults walking the paths—some hurried, some not—even old friends sitting on benches, braving the chill together. And then there’s the couple across the street, warm inside with their ever-expanding family. I remember when they brought their oldest home from the hospital—from my vantage point, he looked more like a bundle of rags than a human being. I’ve seen him sprout from that mysterious creature into a real person, who patters down the hall in socks and reads with his dad and puts orange juice in his cereal (for whatever reason). Now that they’re moving, it will be strange not to see him grow up fully, not to see the younger two follow in his wake, not to see if the predilection for the OJ/cereal combo is genetic. But for now, they’re cozy inside what is still their apartment, having forgone the playground, choosing to climb their parents like a jungle gym instead.
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The noise of the saws and jackhammers clattering outside our windows is driving me insane, but seeing her always gives me some solace. I watch her shift her blinds and peek out at the hotel they’re building, a clumsy, hulking skeleton. Soon enough it’ll be another glass tower, just like the others ruining the views in our neighborhood.We both worked from home long before that was a thing. I see her silhouette linger by the rows of fiberglass hands propped up along the windowsill. She seems to have just gotten in a bulk order and is dressing the hands with jewels, bracelets, and rings - she must be a jeweler. I’ve seen her work late into the night, sometimes till sunrise. I have insomnia, and when I’m up it’s nice to see her window lit. We’ve both lived here a long time - before the neighborhood got trendy. The annoying tourists who seem to be bleeding down from Times square spend more for a night in a suite at Nomad across the street than I spent on my mortgage payment. I’ll probably never see her outside on the street. Long gone is the diner where I’d pick up a $2 egg sandwich and coffee. Back then there was no Impossible Sausage or sides of avocado And neither of us can afford a $7 scoop of gelato at Venchi or a $6 Stumptown coldbrew. So I’m trapped inside my apartment, but at least I have her for company. [pause] And I wonder if she ever looks out and gets comfort from watching me.
In many ways, the woman in this picture feels like a ghost. I photograph people through the windows of their homes, always with their collaboration and consent. Usually, they want to tell their story, too — but not this time. This woman agreed to be photographed but didn’t want to have a conversation. We arranged a time when she promised she would be standing in her window, in my view from across the street. Sure enough, the time came, the window shade went up, and there she was. She seemed to be a jeweler, because she had all these statues of hands and arms that she was adjusting across the windowsill. I imagined they were like mannequins, to try out rings and bracelets. After 20 minutes, the shade went down, and I never saw her again.
In that suspended moment, I imagined the flood: water cascading across his pristine hardwood floor, soaking the Persian rug and first-edition volumes stacked beside his leather chair, the single goldfish lapping its desperate rhythm against the polished wood while he stood frozen, unable to prevent the ruin he had authored. The catastrophe hung there, poised between existence and annihilation, and I could not look away from the beautiful horror of it—this small apocalypse waiting to be born.
This is the Baudouine, which I first photographed in 2021. For years, I tried to reach the top floor—a designer's office—and though we had friends in common, I could never connect with him. Finally, I mounted a multi-pronged campaign: I called his publicist, had a mutual friend write him, and even enlisted the hotel across the street to reach out on my behalf. He eventually agreed to let me photograph the building. Despite all my careful explanations of the project, when I arrived he was rushing out the door—so the person in the photograph is actually my intern, Leo, who I'm happy to report did not spill the goldfish.
It was raining in New York, the kind of thin, constant rain that turns everything into reflections. Across the street, in the hotel, I saw her—a woman in a red dress, standing perfectly still by the glass.The room behind her glowed with soft yellow light. She didn’t move, didn’t turn, didn’t reach for her phone or a drink. Just stood there, watching the rain.From my apartment, she looked almost too still, too poised—like a figure caught in the middle of something that would never happen. I imagined her inside a snow globe, only this one filled with rain instead of snow, a world sealed behind glass.I looked away for only a second.When I looked back, she was gone. The lamp still glowed, the window still streaked with rain, but the red dress wasn’t there anymore.It’s strange—how I keep thinking about her. The woman in the snow globe.
1170 Broadway, now the Ned Club and Hotel, was built in 1902. Though it looks like it was always a Beaux-Arts style hotel, in fact it was originally offices. When it was built the neighborhood was trendy, home to elegant hotels, theaters, and high-society - until that all moved uptown and the neighborhood declined. It wasn’t until trendy hotels were built (2009 - the Ace, and 2012 the Nomad in this same building) that the neighborhood had a real resurgence. Now it is one of the greatest areas to live and visit - filled with restaurants, a great park, and wonderful shops.
She wonders where they all come from and when they’ll disappear. Today there’s a guy floating face down, and for a minute she wonders if she’s looking onto a crime scene. But then he stands up and shakes it off. Is she a little disappointed that he’s alive? It’s been awhile since their last vacation, two years ago in Tulum, before their son was born.
She wonders if the hotel guests watch her as she shadow boxes. It’s her way to relieve a little stress without losing much time. She strides along the carpet, with each punch picturing the face of someone who has recently annoyed her. She looks towards her bookshelf, at the pile up of books she hasn’t had time to read. And then back to the tourists– right, then left, then back to the right. The baby was just crying in the next room, but her husband has jumped in, letting her finish her workout. She hears the wails turn to giggles as her husband lifts him from the crib. When she’s done she’ll close the blinds and kiss their son goodnight.ove. (Hence the first name basis, perhaps.) It’s surreal to watch them in progress, crafting the constituent parts of something I’m used to only seeing whole and perfected. Watching something that is ultimately meant to be seen, but not yet. I wish I could inhabit their bodies for a minute and express myself so physically and completely. Hell, I’d settle for inhabiting their brains just so I could fully appreciate the beauty they’re creating. Maybe I will try to see this piece performed once they’re ready, or maybe I will let it live in my head as it is, something always in progress, performed for no one, that I was lucky enough to see.
Everyone has that one building in New York that they don’t stop thinking about every time they walk by. Mine is the Gilsey House, in Chelsea. It looks like a wedding cake. During the Gilded Age, when this was the most famous shopping and theater district for the who’s-who, it was a hotel; now it’s an apartment building. In the picture with the swimming pool, I am photographing it from a brand new hotel - the Virgin Hotel. When the Gilsey House opened in 1872 is was one of the fanciest hotels in the city, the first to offer telephones to its guests. When uptown became more desirable, the hotels left the neighborhood and tourists seldom visited. The Virgin’s opening of their luxury tower standing in contrast to the Gisley house signals the resurgence of the neighborhood, again a tourist destination. In the picture of the Shiva, I am photographing from the trendy Ace Hotel which was the first destination hotel in the neighborhood in the early 2000s.
Rocking in her hammock, the woman meets the gaze of the paintings that cover her wall. She hand-selected each one, and likes to think they’re an extension of herself. From the Frida Khalo tablecloth to the hand-knit pillow that reads “Namaste, Bitches,” she finds comfort here. And she needs comfort, as she sinks back exhausted, feeling weak (despite her sculpted arms), but a little relieved it’s over. Her mother-in-law had been sick for a while, but no one is ever really prepared for the end. She hasn’t changed into mourning clothes yet, taking a moment to breathe before the shiva begins.
In the kitchen, her wife lights the Yahrzeit candle. Though the flame is meant to connote a lifetime of memories, it feels small in her hands. She tries to remember her mother’s face, before the hospital. She hears her sister vacuuming in the next room, draped in heavy, dark clothes. She’s been quiet since the hospital. She vacuums to comfort herself, to fill the space that would, otherwise, feel oppressively empty. The rest of her family will arrive tomorrow, but tonight, the three of them will sit together and drink herbal tea and remember.
Just upstairs, outlined in the light of the television screen, a father tosses his son in the air to celebrate. It’s his 6th birthday, and after finishing the movie they’ll go out for pizza. In the guest room, his mother-in-law finishes knitting a scarf, a gift she started on the flight to New York. She's knitted her entire life, having learned from her own mother before passing it down to her daughter. She hopes to one day teach her grandson too, so when he knits he can remember her the same way she recalls her own mother working the yarn.
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It feels like every year, new neighborhood names pop up somewhere in New York—like “NoMad,” the historic district just north of Madison Square Park, near where I live in Chelsea. When I moved here in the early 2000s, the area was just a part of Chelsea, and it was mostly showrooms for interior design, wholesale garment and toy stores. In the years since, that has been changing. “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” Colson Whitehead wrote in his book The Colossus of New York. One day I was walking up Fifth Avenue, as I always do, dropping my kids off at school, and I noticed this amazing building that looked like it had been classic New York pre-war apartments forever. You wouldn’t know that it was actually once referred to as the New York Gift Building, garnering fame during its time as the city’s main showroom for ceramic and glass giftware, built in 1906 and converted into residential homes in 2004. New York is a city where our personal and collective past lives all around us, embedded in the architecture of our buildings and on the corners of our streets.
