I was out with my dog when the pause order first went into effect in New York City on Sunday, March 22 at 8 pm. 5th Avenue, the main shopping street in my neighborhood, was dark, deserted. This very familiar place was suddenly strange. The unimaginable was happening. I felt a stab of fear, the fear of uncertainty, the fear of not knowing what was going to happen. A fear that my neighborhood, my city, was going to go dark and stay dark. That the public life that is heart of urban living would never return. That all the wonderful things that I never really appreciated about my daily life were just gone. And maybe gone forever. 

I started going out to photograph in the evening, the places that were closed, the places that were open, the people, masked and afraid, or unmasked and defiant going about their ordinary lives. Walking on the street, entering a bodega, ordering a pizza, all were suddenly risky. Mundane tasks were now frightening: working in a store, delivering food, going home on the bus. The most ordinary work required bravery. Everyone trying to maintain distance from each other, to stay safe, but needing to work, to buy food, to clean clothes. In these first photos, I tried to capture how I felt: anxious, afraid, uncertain about the future. Over the course of two months, the photos began to capture instead the amazing way ordinary people adapted to extraordinary circumstances.