Requiem for New York

Looking back over the photographs that he made of New York in 2020, Australian photographer Ashley Gilbertson wrote, “The resulting photo essay is my requiem to the New York that we knew before the pandemic, but also a love letter to the resilient people who never gave up.”

One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic was the shutting down of much of New York and the suspension of national and international travel. For Gilbertson, this enforced a shift in his focus had a profound impact on his life and work. Already a regular runner, his practice during 2020 involved daily distance running and using the camera in his phone to photograph the events unfolding around him as he ran through the streets of the city. Over the course of the year, he documented the trajectory of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the US presidential election, creating a visual diary of the unfolding events across the city.