ABOUT

From March through December of this year, I’m reshooting roughly 150 photos I took in New York City during the pandemic in 2020 – each one on the exact same date, in the exact same place, and at the exact same minute – five years later.

At the height of lockdown, I went out with my camera nearly every day; I was photographing almost daily, pulled by something (mainly, my mother’s voice in my head). The city I’ve always loved to photograph had transformed into a surreal version of itself, and I felt an undeniable pull to document it – not just for myself, but for everyone who wasn’t here to see it. I didn’t know what I was making, only that I was witnessing things so few people had ever seen before: Times Square empty at rush hour, Grand Central silent during peak commuting hours, the Brooklyn Bridge with no other people in view during a perfect sunset.

Sometime in May 2020, the idea for this project started to take shape: What if I came back to these same spots, on the same days, at the same times – a couple years from now? I didn’t know how long, the thought was just….after. When we’re New York again. 

That “what if” became a quiet north star, and I kept the thought with me as time moved forward, as life changed, and as the city came back. And now, in 2025, it feels like the right time to really take the time to look back and reflect and take on the shooting schedule. So I created a database of my favorite 2020 photos, complete with timestamps and metadata, and I’m retracing my steps.

This project is a study of what five years means – to a city, to a culture, to a person. In 2020, photography became the thing that kept me grounded in a year when reality felt like a movie. And for those of us who were here, there was an extra weight to it all – a feeling that we’d be measuring life in "before and after" from that point on.

In the years since, this project has remained quietly in motion, even through moments when I couldn’t pick up a camera at all – like the spring of 2024, when I originally planned to shoot the book, and my dad’s cancer returned and I put everything on hold to help take care of him. That pause only deepened the meaning of what I’m doing now. Time isn’t just a theme in this work – it’s the material itself.

As I reshoot these images, I’m seeking near perfect recreations, but I’m doing it all handheld. I’ve always shot that way, and the slight shifting and differing angles deepen the connection to the very real human behind the lens. I’m shooting in real time, within the same minute of the original photograph, knowing full well that what’s in front of my lens is beyond my control but I’ve got 60 seconds to capture something. I’m letting the city answer the question: What exactly does five years after being the epicenter of a global pandemic look like? The result will be a photographic record, yes – but also a personal story, a cultural artifact, and a love letter to a city that I never lost faith in.