Day For Night
It was pea soup hot and twice as thick when the lights went out at 4:10 pm on Thursday, August 14th, 2003, in the New York City Criminal Court building at 1 Centre Street. A building full of murder cases, rape cases, burglary, petty theft, larceny, drug infractions, RICO cases, divorce cases, civil disobedience, people suing each other over all manner of disappointments, disagreements, broken promises, truckloads of tiny refrigerators gone missing, manslaughter. All courtroom activity stopped as the R trains halted under the City Hall in 8 seconds flat. By 4:20, after about 10 minutes of total darkness, no elevators and no air circulation, the court officers started to migrate their charges through the evacuation stairs outside to the Centre Street Courthouse steps. Defendants in ill-fitting orange jumpsuits, handcuffed, and some in ankle chains squinting into the sun from a tomb-dark white marble lobby. Lawyers in their Thursday best, judges in their summer robes and juries with growing hopes of an early dismissal filed out cautiously. Court officers, stenographers, disgruntled wives and husbands, school groups, sandwich kiosk workers, people trying to find the DMV. The Manhattan Supreme Court diaspora.
This growing crowd didn’t seem to bother actor Pierce Brosnan. Julianne Moore had been the first to dart. The production assistants and her stylist grabbed her and made a beeline to her trailer as soon as the crowd started to jeer…. but Pierce was showing every sign of sticking it out. It was HIS production. Laws of Attraction. It said so right on the chair he was sitting in, placed carefully to make a nice photo for the gathered media against the courthouse steps. He entertained us with a few quips. He’s a funny guy…. He’s Irish. He does his own stunts. He can take the piss…. and this had been a routine “leak” shoot, likely from studio PR to the big New York Dailies and National Weekly magazines. We were expected. The rabble. The New York Press Corps. Tough as old boots. Badly in need of a smoke. Gossipy, caffeinated, and in some cases unshowered. Today was a big “tentpole” exterior shot and the newswires should send their best – it’s good for business – it’s good for the box office. A nice big city PR move by Pierce’s production company.
Once that shot has run double truck and centered, the production can expect to be left pretty much alone – which was their strategy. As the growing crowd started to realize who Pierce was, however, and what they had walked into, the heckling started, and their strategy went out the window. “YO! Remington Steele,” …etc. etc. When one large woman in a blue floral yelled “Hey James Bond! How you gonna get out of THIS ONE!” the damn broke. Brosnan’s recent split with the James Bond folks nee Barbara Broccoli had been rumored to be sudden, and not without some contention – Die Another Day indeed, and he wasn’t having it…. so, he booked it… following Julianne down the long row of thick electrical cables to the trailer caravan parked in the alley by 1 Police Plaza. And wrap.
Juliane Moore and Pierce Brosnan on the New York Supreme Courthouse Steps
The 2003 Northeast Blackout was the largest power failure to hit the United States in modern times and the second largest in world history. It lasted three days in some places. Overburdened as it was with the air conditioning needs of August, the power grid that connects the Northeast states and Canada was brought down by a series of small, almost trivial failures. Some overgrown trees, a bug in the software at FirstEnergy that failed to sound an alert, a series of automatic switches that tripped one after another. Bing-bing-bing. The whole shebang went down like flat beer in a few minutes, from Ontario to Iowa, from Boston to Charleston. Day for night. Of course, standing as we were in the gathering crowd of 200,000 murderers, rapists, plaintiffs, disappointed movie stars, confused police officers, messengers, homeless people, frantic production flacks, working press, semi-working press, hangers on, etc.…. we didn’t know any of that. We who were sent down to take photos of the Brosnan set for the New York Dailies didn’t actually have a good way of knowing that we were in the epicenter of a crisis effecting 55 million people. We knew that the traffic signals were gone… that was for sure, because you could hear the honking, the jeering, and the carrying on from Broadway as rush hour loomed. Shut off all the signals at the same time? Bedlam. In an August rush hour? Mayhem.
New York, at this point, was only 23 months from 9-11. For many people who were there for both events, 9-11 and the New York Blackout, the two serve as bookends. Gotham City, shattered by the most depraved act of terrorism ever carried live on television on one end and a blistering summer night when New York pulled itself back together on the other. At that moment, though, we 11 million strong had no idea what we were into. Is this another terrorist attack? Will the power blink back on momentarily? Will this go on for a day? More? Early news reports were speculating a failure in Buffalo. (it was actually the Ohio Valley). New York, Cleveland, Detroit – all dark. We were, at that moment, the ONLY people in the gathering crowd of 200,000 to have this information. Radio, TV, in fact all broadcast sources: squelched. People who lived in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island discussing how they would get home. Walk? Bicycle? Pedicab? The elevators in the garages were out. The subway was stopped. No ATMs. There were people trapped in elevators in every building in New York – simultaneously.
I had been a card-carrying working press photographer for about 18 months at this point. One of the Digital Originals; The first generation of photographers to adopt digital SLRs for our assignments. Entertainment division: 2nd battalion, day shift, night shift, 3 assignments a day, where you want us to stand, are there gift bags for the wife? I had lost my cushy but brutal corporate job working for a sociopathic publishing boss the day before 9-11, and by the next afternoon the world had completely shifted on its axis. Looking for a new job stopped being a priority at 9:03 am, Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. New York burned, the air filled with the smell of burning plastic and other things…. and the armies of the lost, their faces staring out at us from block after block of posted missing person fliers like paper shingles on pier 94, broke the planet’s brain, and all of our hearts. I had a new wife, a below market rent, a six month “early retirement’ settlement from Time Inc., a new set of cameras, and exactly one appointment in my calendar – a wedding I was shooting for a friend of a friend as part of my growing photography hobby. $300. Cash. I was adrift. The city was adrift. The city of my birth. I was 37 years old.
I’m not good at moping. I’m a “put a shine on your shoes” kinda guy. I hitched up my laptop and got to work. I had ONE gig booked… maybe I could get a second one? I wasn’t shy. I could speak the Queens’ English. Brooklyn too. I had a versatile “look” which could get me into places without attracting too much attention. Trustworthy, but slightly transparent. Cellophane. There was a lot to shoot in New York in the days my old editor calls “back when we used to PAY photographers.”
I found newswire work fairly quickly. I was handy with digital technology and the internet and could FTP from the field (file transfer protocol… how we newsies used to upload photos). Editors mostly liked me. The old guard, the film team, was moving on, and we, the digital team, were in demand. At first, I covered small things – fluff. “Vespa Opens A Store In East Hampton”. “New Nightclub In Long Island Burns Down Under Suspicious Circumstance”. I had a place to sleep adjacent to East Hampton – which made me useful to the news desk in summertime. I took a lot of classes at ICP. Photoshop, studio lighting, darkroom, color printing, web design. I shot freelance jobs, or “chased the pager” for stories. “Large Snake Loose In Bronx Building Duct System”. “Headless Body In Topless Bar”. I loved the pager stories.
My first published picture was Pale Male, the “Central Park Famous” hawk that was living above news-anchor Paula Zahns Fifth Avenue terrace. Apparently, Paula wanted the carnivorous bird gone…. I got that set of photos like a bolt from the blue– I was out “taking my camera for a walk” in Central Park one winter day and this spectacular, regal bird landed on the 90th Street reservoir fence directly in front of me. He posed right, posed left, and flew off. Like a red-carpet appearance. I made maybe 5 exposures, but clean, against the blue winter sky. The editors at the Post framed it so that Pale Male was pecking Paula Zahn in the head. Full page to the bleed. Oh, New York Post… you slay me. They sent me a check for $150.00. I was now a published professional! Anything was better than going back to corporate life. Just a week later, through a family friend, I managed to talk my way into the press pit at the Today show in Rockefeller Center. This was a step up…. May 17th, 2002. Celine Dion… fresh off her hit song from Titanic. Defined start time, defined end time, limited set of two songs, and ready access to Starbucks for the uplink afterwards. Easy Peasy. I would cover the show, file as fast as possible to a few different wire editors and see if I could start a new career. Optimism!
Arriving at dawn, I shoehorned myself into the press pit. I was intimidated by the crowd, rough around the edges and cranky from their late-night assignments. I was, after all, fresh meat. A guy next to me, who I would eventually get to know as Kenny the Gimp, was doing shots of Jamesons out of his empty film canisters. A voluptuously proportioned Latino girl with three cameras was yelling at Matt Lauer. “MAAAAAAT…!” Her name was Carmen. She worked for famous paparazzi Ron Gallella – of Marlon Brando and football helmet fame. Al Roker came over and said hello. This was SHOW BUSINESS. It was 7:15 in the morning. Everyone smoked, chewed gum… some at the same time. Network flacks buzzed around the audience…. My flash was blocking the guy behind me – a famous New York film set paparazzi named Steve Sands. Steve and I would have MANY conversations over 20 years…. Some pleasant, some creative, one knock down drag out that got us both ejected from Times Square in a hurry. It’s a tight squeeze – and with the experience that came later, I came to understand that this is the most rookie move you can make – to put up a flash bracket on in a press pit for a TV show. It’s lit for TV! Just shoot it that way. I didn’t know. I thought the bracket looked “pro”. I had just bought it…. Payments still due on it… So much to learn. I took the hits…mostly on the head and eventually got the message and bagged the flash.
It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, Fall. I’m maybe 11. It’s been raining. I’m wearing my Mighty Mac corduroy coat and jeans. I’m in the backyard of my family’s house in Long Island. Farmland adjacent. My dad is watching football on a 12” black and white TV, playing his drum pads in the living room of our summer house. That’s what he does on Saturdays. Mom is “resting”. That’s what moms do. We’ve driven out the 2.5 hours from the city… it’s cold, dreary. My sister is hiding in her room with her toy barn and horses. Dad’s given me something to fool around with. His old light meter. Sekonic L-398. Leather case. It’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen. I point it at the sky. At a random weed. At the cat. At the house. I take careful measurements. F5.6. F8. The little red needle bounces around. I change the ISO to 200, move the little arrow to a different speed. I have absolutely no idea what any of this means. I snap in the little white plastic bulb that covers the ink black sensor element. It makes the readings lower. I remove it and place a thing that looks like black Swiss cheese over the sensor. The readings are higher. Cheese disk = more light. Bulb = less light. I file this away for the future. It might be important.
In 2003, Dennis Van Tyne was the de facto senior photographer in the floating poker game that the newswire photographers called work. Dennis wore the same clothes every day. Green Vietnam era army jacket, black or navy dress shirt, jeans, army boots, camera sack across his shoulder, belt with hanging array of lens pouches. Dennis had been part of the entertainment corps for at least 10 years when I arrived. Maybe forever. Dennis would attend red carpets in said army jacket with white furry bunny ears on. Or crazy hats with stuffie antlers. Tee shirts with silly logos. “It’s a strategy”, he told me…. “I get full eye contact… every time”. Dennis knew things. Later, Dennis would have a stroke at work and move home to his family in Staten Island – his younger sister as his guardian – but that’s later. THIS Dennis was in full Dennis mode, and built for the moment we found ourselves in. He had, among other things, a pager wired to the AP and Reuters desks…. And was the first to know the extent of our situation. “Power out for 55 million as unknown failure brings down the grid from below Washington DC to as far north as Canada.”
“New game, people. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, this will all be front page news. What’s the shot gonna be, and who’s gonna get it?” said Dennis with a sly and earnest grin. Photography is a competitive sport for those who choose to play it. This was game on. A war cry. Who’s gonna step up. And what would be the shot? The defining photo for this moment, the front page? What are YOU WILLING TO DO TO GET IT.
We are all willing. That’s why we’re here… in the big town, playing the game. Big Market Newswire photography is not a guild, a union, a federation, a league. There are no barriers of entry. There is no organizing body. Newswire jobs last a few hours, not a few days or a few years. There is no certificate, no bar exam. You can go to your local camera store and leave with exactly the same qualifications as anyone else – a current issue Canon or Nikon camera, the holy trinity of pro zoom lenses (wide, normal and telephoto), a flash or two, and as much grit as you walked in with. You’re basically as employed as a freelance saxophone player. You’re creating nonlinear art from a linear experience. Digital laser tag. Can you blow that horn? People fall into it largely by accident. They lose another gig. They love photojournalism. They think they can do it and find it’s more interesting than punching a clock. They run away and join the circus. It’s a roughneck industry. It’s a self-defined brotherhood/sisterhood. It’s likely that I will spend more time with my newswire brothers and sisters than my family, my editors or my news colleagues over the next 15 years. Assignments end – but you will be standing with these same 45 people at the next venue in just a few hours. The pay can be lousy – or you can hit a hot streak. Get an exclusive. Pick up a private or two. Fashion Week comes to mind. There are no pensions. There is no de-facto health insurance. There are no retirement contributions, other than what you set aside for yourself. In many cases the tables are tilted to the house, and you will not own the exclusive rights to monetize your work once it’s pushed out. But none of us were thinking about any of that on August 14th, at 4:32 pm. We were thinking: make the shot - define this moment - Live Forever.
At this point, every single person who could leave a building in lower Manhattan had left that building and was on the street. World’s biggest, saddest block party. Like 9-11, two million people would cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot to get home that day – overtaking the car lanes. City Hall would raise its battle gear around Park Row – the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the deputy, all eventually arriving and sequestered there. Mayor Bloomberg HAD been having coffee at the Park Street Diner for an event to launch a new anti-rat program. So…. staking out City Hall, a short walk from 1 Centre, was a strong possibility for “The Shot”. Motorcades arriving? The mayor looking busy? Flacks on walkies? The crowd crossing the Brooklyn Bridge was also a contender. That ran big after the World Trade Center attack.
I’m a classicist. The Life Magazine photo taken by Alfred Eistenstaedt of the V-J Day kiss following the announcement of the surrender of Japan kept coming back to me. In it, a sailor plants a ravenous, rawboned kiss on an unsuspecting nurse – in celebration of the cessations of the war, Times Square behind him. If all the power is off, the news tickers would be dark. If one could position themselves correctly at sunset or just before, a crafty light-bender could shoot Times Square, full of people, with all the LED displays muted. Golden hour light. To me, that was the shot. The center of the world – Times Square, blacked out, as the dusk falls and uncertainty settles in. Find a foreground subject, perhaps a couple to anchor the shot… and that’s where I was going. Photos are ALWAYS better with a person as an anchor. Always.
Havoc at City Hall during the 2003 New York Blackout
We knew some things – because, we were, after all, professionals. We knew that sunset was going to be 7:55 pm-ish. We knew we were going to be walking. In my case my scooter chose that day to die it’s final scootery death, rushing down the FDR to the Brosnan set on short notice. It’s about 4 miles from Park Row to Times Square. Maybe 2 hours walk? We all had large camera bags. A nuance. It was sanitation truck juice hot and the city streets smelled like dog pee. Taxi cabs now cost $200. I had 3 cigarettes. A bottle of Advil, about 18 bucks and a scooter helmet and tail-box that I needed to ditch someplace…
Dennis had other ideas – he wasn’t saying what – but I knew the look. AJ, a photographer I had swapped Camel cigarettes with since my first day on the line at the Ed Sullivan Theater door, and a fellow named Morgan who I had just met, felt as I did, that Times Square was a good nominee. So - the team headed off in all different directions.
City Hall, just a few blocks away, was a madhouse. But from outside the gates? Best guess as to the photos we were going to get. A friendly news stand across Park Row stored my helmet and scooter chain for later retrieval… for $10 of the $18 bucks I had. The Brooklyn Bridge was the same as 9-11. That’s a shot we had all seen. I made both of those sets in about 45 minutes, as did AJ. It was now 5:30. Three hours to go till sunset.
Stranded New Yorkers walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge
Morgan had a friend who had access to a building on Canal and Broadway. By some miracle cel service was still working in New York City – roaming charges will apply – and we got the high sign to go up to the roof and shoot north on Broadway. A good angle – popular for protest marches. One issue – 16 flights, no elevators, no lights. AJ had a flashlight. I had gumption… we went for it. Chinatown rooftop. This was more like it – we were cooler, out of the fray, once we caught our breath. Morgan’s friends had cold water. We drank all we could hold. Photographed lots of people headed southbound. Tag. Your it. Back down 16 flights of stairs.
At this point, we were walking west – 8th street, 6th avenue. Some car movement up 6th avenue – mostly NYPD, some wildcat taxis. We stuck out our thumbs… danced around – held up our press badges… .and caught a shared ride on some sort of police barricade truck up to Penn Plaza – 34th and 8th. Country-mile style, on the back flatbed, with the blue wooden stanchions and triangular wooden A frames.
As we approached Penn Plaza…the enormity of the event was beginning to dawn on us. 650,000 commuters travel through Penn Station every day – making it the busiest train station in the Western Hemisphere. And… all 650,000 were waiting outside to go home. It was an amazing scene. Priests from the Franciscan Friars on 30th were passing out free ice cream cones. Without refrigeration, it was all a mess waiting to happen. All the sidewalk cafes were handing out whatever they had before it turned into summer soup. People were lying on the concrete, just trying to stay cool. The sidewalks were melted bubble gum hot and 7th Avenue was wall to wall pedestrians. Very few cars - no traffic lights.
Franciscan Friars distribute ice cream to overheated commuters during the 2003 Blackout
By now most people had gotten the word that this wasn’t terrorism. The fear factor was ramping down. Remember – this was a city that was on its bloodied knees for 23 months. Dedications, prayers, the honoring of the dead, the honoring of the wounded, the search for the missing…. But despite the gathering calm, everything that depends on electricity to work? Every hotel guest with a swipe key who had been out of their room sightseeing at 4pm? Locked out. Indefinitely. No access to their medications – their clothes, no toilets. Payphones had lines 50 people long. Each. Boom-boxes were coming out. Light was falling fast.
Stranded commuters at Penn Station during the 2003 New York Blackout
Arriving in Times Square, The Team split up. AJ was done with all this. He was near home, and he was affiliated with a wire that only carried celebrity. Immortality another day. AJ with a voice like a rusted shopping cart, was a pure celebrity hound…. He had a wife to go home to that night in Stuyvesant Town – and she was easily spooked. Wrap.
Morgan and I staked out a corner…. The big tickers were, indeed, dark. People shuffled around. Most sat, looking bored. Perhaps not the shot I had hoped for. In my mind’s eye, all attention would be turned to the tickers – like the moon landing or the Kennedy assassination. Not the case. Everyone was EVERYWHERE. Sitting, standing, rollerblading, flirting, dancing, moping, laughing, crying, waiting. The world’s most boring sit-in. I went wide angle, The New York Times lens. The Times is wide, the Post is telephoto, and the Daily News is 50mm and slower to pay. Know your audience. I drained my camera batteries. Click click click. Done and dusted.
The sun sets on Times Square – all tickers and signs dark – during the 2003 New York Blackout
It was getting dark. I needed to sit and review my take with last of my camera power, find a spot someplace quiet and safe to pull out a laptop. By this point, we had lost the light. There weren’t even the usual sickly yellow sodium bulb streetlamps to set your watch by…. It was getting dark-dark. Dark like I had never seen on sixth avenue by the fountains outside the New York Post building on 43rd. There was some moonlight, but just some. Waning Gibbous. Some emergency lights on exit doors…. But that’s it. A night like no other. Just enough to find my way home…I walked the rest of the way – to the upper east – 3 more miles, feeling with my whiskers up fifth avenue where the cobblestones under my feet would be familiar as old shoes, and set up my edit in the guest room – pushing out the top 20 out to News Desk in London. The uplink was tide-change slow…. but I had enough flip phone batteries. Always carry a lot of batteries and charge them obsessively. My wife was glad to see me. Mostly… with a secret – she was pregnant with our son. I didn’t know that at the time. She suspected it. Lucky we all survived the heat in that apartment that night. Must have been 100 degrees.
Pushing 40 shots up the wire to London desk took FOREVER on dial up. Hours. I didn’t want to fall asleep in case the connection faltered. In and out of awake… the randomness creeping into my thoughts, on the pull out single in the guestroom with the scratchy Indian blanket. I phoned in around 1 am… took a few tries to get the exchange right. 044. “Have you got my set?”. “Yes, we have your set, mate… how are you fairing?” “Steady as she goes”. I was asleep before they disconnected.
It was a restless sleep. The silence was deafening except for the soprano voice of occasional ambulances on Lexington Avenue rushing to Lenox Hill Hospital. People who’ve fallen in the dark. People who were stuck in elevators, maybe. Heat exhaustion. Bitten by a ventilator duct snake. The song of the city. But no busses, no subways, no car traffic, no lights. The dark-dark night.
I can’t sleep worth a damn when I’m working on a story. Never have been able to do that. I’m up before the light. I’m uneasy. Are the lights coming back on today? Is there more to shoot? Am I missing it? Have a missed it already? I kiss my sleeping wife in the dark, gather what’s left of the batteries, memory cards, gear… and mount up on the big hybrid bike. In the before times, I had been scheduled to shoot the GMA music concert in Bryant Park. Liz Phair. GMA is an easy gig, usually. But today? Who knows. I have two hours to make the rounds before check-in….
First stop, Times Square again. This time, though, the first light of morning reveals all the hotel guests and tourists…. Sleeping together on the street. Thousands of people. Silence. Then I hear a familiar voice. John Montone of 1010 Wins…. “This is John Montone… Maam, did you sleep here all night?” Unmistakable. I make some shots, right, left, center. Warm up my eyes. I don’t want to disturb people – but this is too good. I pass by the Today Show, Rock Center. It’s dark… they have pulled up the outdoor concert stage and moved inside.
A stranded commuter wakes to a new day during the 2003 New York Blackout
What struck me the most in these early hours of that morning August 15th – It’s Friday, normally a working day. But the city? Ever visit a big city on Christmas Morning? Quieter than that. It was New Yorkers being… considerate! Shush, people are sleeping. Then I realized something. That whole afternoon, that evening, the walk uptown, that very morning…. I didn’t see an unkind act by ANYONE. I saw neighbors helping neighbors. Young and healthy people minding the elderly – their bags… their luggage. Watering each other. Busses parked and turned on – acting as cooling room for people who felt faint. People took pictures, shared their cel phones when they could get signal. Noshed on melting ice cream cones. Directed traffic on a freelance basis. It was as if the whole of New York, collectively, said this will not be a tragedy today. We will not go back. We will stand by one another. We have, as a city, turned a corner. We will own this day and perhaps, by the grace of God, be reborn anew.
Travelers waive down transport on 8th Avenue during the 2003 New York Blackout
Arriving on 40th and 6th avenue, I locked up my bike on the Bryant Park fence and what a site…. GMA was a HOOT.There was no crew. Maybe 10,000 sleepy New Yorkers just waking up. Spencer, the weatherman, was the only GMA host to make it in. No Charlie, no Diane Sawyer. Just Spencer – rolling a standup with one cameraman in front of the stage. Liz Phair had a traveled to Bryant Park in a powered motorhome, so they had a way to regroup, stay cool, and do hair and make-up. The band shifted their set to go all acoustic outside. Live national, no delay, no second take. Respect. GMA was set to host a school from East Harlem, and they SHOWED UP! 50 little kids, and Charlie the Weatherman, and I’m one of maybe three photographers. That’s it. THIS IS SHOW BUSINESS. The audience were all the people who slept under the stars the night before…. The Sleepy eyed. The Stranded. The Delighted. The Unafraid. The Undaunted. Out of the darkness. Into the light.
Liz Phair performs on GMA August 15th, 2003 during the New York Blackout
Postscript: The day after the lights came back on, the New York Post ran THIS shot… as Page One. It’s not my favorite. It’s not even THE shot. THE shot is universally acknowledged to be of the New York skyline with all the lights blacked out, silhouetted with sun setting behind it - which ran as the cover of Time Magazine. Getty editor Robert Giroux took THE shot from his bedroom window in Brooklyn – without ever leaving the comfort of his living room – spending just a few minutes on it. However – last laughs being best, my shot ran as page one again EXACTLY 9 months later to the day, May 14th, 2004, to welcome in the Blackout Baby Boom of 2004 Oh New York Post, you slay me…
