By Philip Montgomerey, The New York Times, May 16, 2020
Before the crisis hit, I was working on a lot of studio-based portraiture work. All of those assignments had to be put on hold when the pandemic closed down the country. That was a really jarring reality, but I’ve since come to see it as an opportunity to dive back into my background in reporting.
A lot of my early assignments were to capture the mood of the city. It felt haunting. People were still processing what was happening, and there was a lot of uncertainty and shock and fear. I had no desire to leave. There was no world in which I would abandon the city that’s given me so much, and I think that part of being a New Yorker is sharing in the collective experience of the city, in good times and in bad. On a personal front, and a journalistic one, it was the story of our time.
When Kathy Ryan, the magazine’s director of photography, reached out to me about this assignment, she impressed upon me the importance of this historical moment. We felt a huge responsibility to show the unvarnished truth of the unfolding pandemic in our backyard. New York was about to be horribly overwhelmed.
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