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One of the things I love about New York is that there is art everywhere. Museums, galleries, performances, to just the way people dress. Even the building across the street is a veritable layer cake of self expression tonight.
We’ve got a party on the bottom floor that looks like it was ripped straight from the pages of Vogue. I’m talking trumpet sleeves, fascinators, coordinated bowties. I am dying to know if these people work in the fashion industry or they’re just that fabulous.
Up a floor there seems to be a performance of Swan Lake occurring, complete with chiffon costuming and professional dancers. Do they live there or is it just a practice space? Are they together? Did they meet through dance? They must have, since people who dance at their caliber usually start super young, I’m pretty sure. It seems so romantic, to share such an intimate passion like that with a partner.
And then there’s the top floor, where the photographer’s assistant and her husband used to live. Well, she still lives there, but he’s passed away. I know a little about them, a creative duo. Another couple that had a shared artistic language, even though they expressed it differently. She made art in her own right, but took a sort of backseat to others, whether it was the photographer she worked for or her husband, the painter. But it always seemed to me like it was of her own volition, that she had this genuine admiration, that she enjoyed supporting him. Even now that he’s gone, their apartment still feels full of his presence, what with his blank canvases and paint brushes all as he left them. She even keeps his paintings in the window, where he used to paint. Maybe she hasn’t been ready to move his things since he died, but I’d like to think that, in the case of the paintings at least, it’s because she wants to share them with the world rather than keep them to herself. Let the home they shared be a little gallery show of his legacy, for those of us fortunate enough to have a view into his window.
Fifteen years ago, I moved to New York for the theater. I was a young gay kid from the Bay Area now grown up and finally living in New York. I could go to the theater — the thea-tah — whenever I wanted. The apartment is rent stabilized and not far from the 72nd street station, which has an elevator for my wheelchair. But more importantly, it faces one of the most glamorous buildings in the whole city. Looked it up once, it’s called the Dorilton.
My theater days are gone, I lost my job and don’t have the money anymore, but I can still look out at the Dorilton there. It’s like I have my own theater, so some nights, my dog and I will just sit by the window, and keep watch over the building for hours.
The upper floor is always a hoot: The Whites, I call them. They’ve got the study, living room, and library, like a set for a TV show. Coming home, Mr. White — an architect I presume — goes straight to his study and labors over his sketches. His wife wanders into the library, looking for a new book to devour. She’s already finished three this week.
Below them, the Taylors enter the hallway from the dining room. Both dressed to the nines, him in a sharp black tuxedo, her in her red Dior dress. Lawyers turned socialites, the Taylors love a good party and strong cocktail. Tonight, they’ll be off to a fundraiser around the corner at Lincoln Center. They’re always together, always dressed magnificently as they move around town, seeing and being seen.
There is also Mr. Fisk, the bachelor, who lives a floor below. He’s quiet, rarely has guests. He’s often in his drawing room, which remains tidy and nearly untouched. Tonight, there’s a drink left sitting on the table. A college friend stopped by to catch up, but the impromptu visit felt orchestrated. I wonder if the friend was asking him for a loan? Maybe a lot of old friends ask him for money, which is why he prefers the quiet peace of solitude.
The Suttons on the lowest floor moved out nearly three years ago, but their son stayed behind and is now living there with his girlfriend. He’s a hedge fund guy dedicated to his Peloton rides, and she’s a vet in training always who dotes on their doodle. The way he looks at her, I can tell he’s getting ready to propose. His glances at her are nervous but heartstruck, a fool in love, and I love him for it.
Looking at The Dorilton so much reminds me to go upstairs and visit my own neighbor. Fran lives one floor up, and sometimes we watch the theater across the street together. We see everyone moving, dancing, living, both together and apart, through their windows— their moments getting home from work, their cooking, their parties, and their rituals. Sometimes I think about how many of those families know we watch them. You know, I still wonder about that, and I’m never sure.
The Dorilton has been so many things: a derelict building, luxury residences, and a New York City designated landmark. It was built in the early 1900s at 171 West 71st Street, and soon became home to families and creative types during the Roaring 20’s. During the Great Depression though, the building fell into foreclosure and slowly deteriorated, its facade and ornate decorations being stripped away. It lingered in this state for a few decades until new ownership began to refurbish parts of the building, paving the way for the Dorilton’s facade to be dedicated as a city landmark in 1974. When it became a co-op in the 1980s, more renovations followed, and it’s now a luxury building that many artists and actors call home.
The Dorilton is particularly special to me — it’s one block from where my grandparents’ office was. They owned an employment agency and staffed some of the most fabulous apartments in New York City, which definitely played into my imagination of their life in NYC being full of glitz and glamor. When I moved to New York in the early 2000s, I watched the building for years, always wanting to photograph it. But the management for the building opposite was particularly uncooperative — they wouldn’t let me leave notes for the residents or even photograph out the window of a vacant apartment. It was so frustrating but only made me more determined. Last year, my assistant ended up at the tailor shop in the building having a dress altered, and realized she could leave notes for the residents. And the rest was history! The three neighbors who responded were so kind and helpful, but one, Jake, went above the rest. When we couldn’t find the perfect view to shoot from, he took it upon himself to contact the rest of his neighbors and spread the word about the project, ideally finding a better view. Eventually, we settled on photographing from his neighbor Fran’s window.
She opens the window, because she knows he plays guitar at this hour. Standing in the kitchen, she leans back and hears the low faint notes from the apartment over. She’s waiting for the cookies in the oven to finish. Not that she plans to eat any, instead she will bundle them up with the others in a canvas bag and bring them downstairs to the homeless man who draws birds on newspaper. She likes making things for others, at least since her sons moved out. That new couple downstairs reminds her of them, young and a little lost. Not that it’s a bad thing, she thinks. Outside her vision, the man plucks away on the guitar and waits for his girlfriend to call him from the other room. Soon she’ll say it’s time to change and go downtown, where he’ll play onstage while she dances and spins on the tips of her feet. That’s when their day really begins, and now it’s like he’s waking up from a heavy nap.
I looked out from my friend’s building one day and across the way, in her neighbor’s window, I saw an Academy Award (my friend had also won an Oscar, so he recognized it from far away). Turns out, they were colleagues: we searched all the names on the building’s doorbell and recognized one as that of a film producer, who must have been the person that they faced. The Academy Award-winner was glad to connect us with all of his neighbors, and that’s how this picture was made. His name was Jamie Bernake, and he passed away not long after.
Autumn is the only season they’re really in New York. They summer out East, and come December they are never here - I imagine they have family somewhere warm - maybe California. It’s a quiet time, where most days she Zooms in on board meetings and watches the leaves change. Every autumn he has a renewed interest in tennis, probably fueled by the country club competition of the past summer. Really, though, autumn is a romantic time. A hub of days where they exist without distractions. They don’t tell anyone which dates they’re back in the city. They have no social events, flights to catch, or baby shower gifts to buy.The woman below has three beagles. The dogs are her pride and joy - they never seem to be alone - a friend or maybe a dog sitter comes to look after them when she’s not home. The large gold statue of a stallion in the middle window looks as serious as she sometimes does as she sits working in her apartment. But when I run into her in the park, I see a whole other side of her. She and her dogs are dressed playfully and they seem to be having a blast as they frolic, chasing old tennis balls and jumping around. Once I saw one of her dogs run out of the front door alone. The doorman chased the dog down Riverside Drive for blocks and blocks, but came back alone without him. The dog was back the next day, and I wonder how he was found. If something had happened to him, I think she might have died with him. She would choose the company of dogs over people any time.
The Upper West Side has two vast expanses of rare Manhattan greenspace: Central Park on the eastern edge and Riverside Park on the western flank. That makes it one of New York's best neighborhoods to see the seasons change in the city. Here, along Riverside Drive, autumn changes to a snowy winter in 2016.
On the top floor lives Victor, who is repairing a shelf that was sagging. When he was a young man he and his new bride moved to New York from a small town in Greece,. There they lived surrounded by friends and family, but in New York, they knew no one, and it could get quite lonely. But he worked hard, rose through the ranks, bought an apartment on the west side. They had a daughter, Maria, who lived up to their dreams, graduating from Stanford and now working as the head of a big design firm in Seattle. His wife died a few years ago, and he misses her terribly. He also pines for his 10-year-old granddaughter, Olivia, who lives in Seattle with her parents. He and Olivia adore each other, and every month she sends him a cut out heart with a joke written on it. He tapes each one up on the window, so they are always in sight. The hearts are comforting, but it’s not the same as everyone being together.
Below him sits Oliver, hitting a lacrosse ball against the wall. All Oliver cares about is lacrosse. He’s on the varsity team and practicing for his final game of high school. But the banging noise makes his mother crazy. The ball has left thousands of dents in the wall, and his mother tells him that the second he leaves for college she will fill in the divots and give the room a new coat of paint. But she never will. Once her beloved boy is out of the house, she will be astonished to discover that she actually misses the banging. She will eventually turn his room into a library, but one with a beat up wall decorated with thousands of dents.
Roxanne and Preston have been together for years. He is frugal and has never understood why she needs so many bags. When they first met he lived in a very bare apartment. She moved in and decorated the whole place. At first he loved it, but as the years go by he feels it’s all a bit much. She bought a huge playhouse for the cats and finds herself enjoying their company more and more as the years go by.
The Dad grew up in a small town in Ohio and still longs for his mother’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes which he ate as a child at this very table. He worries about the big city life he’s created for his daughter, Clare, and tries to bring the warmth of his small town home in Ohio to the city. Clare is setting the table for dinner. He has ordered meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas from the Westside Diner. So they will have a midwestern feast, not cooked by him, but ordered from the diner.
When non-New Yorkers picture a “glamorous” Manhattan, often they imagine the Upper West Side. Perhaps that’s because the neighborhood is so often featured as the home of characters and celebrities on popular television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, and How I Met Your Mother. This building was used as the exterior of the fictional Mr. Pitt’s building in Seinfeld, so it’s become pretty recognizable. But the most notable actual celebrity resident may surprise you: Kokomo Jr, a chimpanzee who appeared on TV shows such as Today, The Price is Right, and The Tonight Show, lived with his handler Nick Carrado on the first floor. A longtime neighbor across the way said that he, when he was a child in the 1960s, used to watch the chimp through the window and was very excited one day when he was actually invited over and got to meet him.
A: Check it out, the people across the street are doing Mardi Gras.
B: Officially back in the age of parties.
A: Isn’t it sort of weird to see people with the top half of their faces masked instead of the bottom?B: Oh, actually, yeah, that’s bizarre. Do you think this is the first time they’ve seen each other since pre-pandemic?
A: Nah, I bet they were a pod. Or at least doing Zoom game nights or whatever.
B: I kind of love that they’re all older but still doing it up in their own way. Chill, but still got the champagne, the costumes. I hope that’s me in, what, 20, 30 years?
A: It’s definitely going to be you.
B: Not you?
A: God, no. See the woman in the apartment above? That’s me now and forever.
B: Hanging out by yourself?
A: Yeah, but look at her, she is living it up—obviously not lonely. She likes her own company. I do too.
B: Yeah, you are very good at being alone. [beat] I wish I knew what she was laughing at.
A: I bet she’s laughing at her own joke, or maybe a good memory. She’s got that rich inner life.
B: Honestly? A great skill. Especially during COVID.
A: It was. I did miss people though. Especially you.
B: I missed you too.
We staged a Mardi Gras party in my friend's mother's apartment, with masks that I had from a recent trip to Venice. I took the picture from my friend Rosemarie's rental apartment across the way. This Art Deco building on the Upper West Side was designed by Emery Roth, the famed Hungarian-Jewish architect who is responsible for some of the neighborhood's most prominent residences, including the San Remo and The El Dorado.
On the top floor, a man sings to nobody. What starts as a low hum trips up the octaves, his hands patiently wavering in the air with each note before clenching at the soft falsetto. A pause—he clears his throat and begins the exercise again. He then starts to sing a Christmas carol. His arms waving to conduct the time, before throwing his chest out to bellow the chorus.
The family below cannot hear the performance with the noise of the dogs barking and Christmas music coming from the radio. Mom is almost done wrapping the presents, measuring each cut, slicing the paper with care, folding the edges to a perfection. Her son takes the wrapped gifts to the tree while the father hangs decorations and reminds the daughters to stop playing with the dogs in the other room and get dressed for their big dinner.
Two more stories below, a woman lights candles alone. It’s the first Hanukkah since her husband passed, and the makeshift menorah, fashioned from an old tennis racket, was a gift from him. He was an artist, always crafting beautiful things from leftover objects. Their whole apartment was once filled with these things—light fixtures from bottles and planters from rusted car parts. I wonder if she feels lonely, left by herself with all the leftover pieces. Over the years, she’s covered the walls with photos. In the long hallways that once haunted her with their vastness, she sees the faces of her kids, then hears their stomping and laughing from the floor above. The house never looks empty now and she never looks cold.
My photographs put a frame around the most sacred moments of everyday life, which to me always happen in the home. For that reason and more, I love to photograph holidays. This was a year when the families in this building were celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah on the same night. In the upper right window, someone is rehearsing to perform in a Christmas concert. Below, a family is preparing for their big holiday dinner, decorating their Christmas tree. And below them, a woman is alone, lighting the Hanukkah candles. The Hanukkiah was handmade by one of her kids when they were little. Even though they’ve all grown up and moved out of the house by now, she still uses it, year after year.
When non-New Yorkers picture a “glamorous” Manhattan, often they imagine the Upper West Side. Perhaps that’s because the neighborhood is so often featured as the home of characters on popular television shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, and How I Met Your Mother. Perhaps it’s because its idyllic brownstones and elegant apartment buildings are bordered by Central Park to the east and Riverside Park to the west (see Autumn and Winter in Riverside) – two vast expanses of rare Manhattan greenspace where you can see the seasons change in the city. Or perhaps it’s because the Upper West Side is home to so many New York institutions: among them, the American Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Columbia University. In fact, some of the most desirable buildings in the Lincoln Center district (see The Dorilton are sought out by opera singers and classical musicians for their extra-thick walls, perfect for muting their practice sessions.
But for all of its fame and charm, the Upper West Side is really a neighborhood for families, with a strong sense of community. My own grandparents lived and worked there in the 1940s — they owned an employment agency on 72nd and Broadway, in a building that’s now a Trader Joe’s. It’s yet another part of New York where I have deep roots, and many close friends who let me photograph their apartments and their lives. In Martini, a father folds laundry, while his son plays with a lacrosse stick one room over. In another, my close friends host a Mardi Gras Party in an Art Deco building designed by Emery Roth, the famed Hungarian-Jewish architect who is responsible for some of the neighborhood’s most prominent residences, including The San Remo and The El Dorado. In one of my favorite photographs, Hanukkah and Christmas, one family is placing presents beneath their dazzling Christmas tree, while their neighbors below are lighting the Hanukkah candles.
In this city, we’re so often rushing by people — we don’t pay enough attention to each other. But we see the same neighbors out our windows for years and years. Part of me thinks we want to leave our shades open so that people can notice us. The Upper West Side might be famous, but my pictures aren’t dramatic. I’m building a framework around the quotidian moments of life, which are the most sacred moments of all.
