Secret Service

Until I trust you, I don’t trust you. This is my default and I come by it honestly.

When something bad happens I become watchful. That is exactly how I am right now, during this global pandemic.

Fellow citizens are usually good people but they are impulsive and unpredictable.

Before the global pandemic, I covered a lot of ground. I rode the subway everywhere. I took photographs all over NYC while waiting for traffic lights, running errands, going to appointments, and commuting to work.

Now I go out very rarely and when I do I need my full brainpower to navigate congested streets full of people. I do not want to catch COVID-19 from a fellow citizen, remain asymptomatic but contagious and spread it around my household and my building. I don’t want to be sedated and sucking air from a ventilator. I do not want to be with fellow citizens who are losing their damned minds because it is 65 degrees and sunny.

Even before lockdown I stopped taking photographs outside. I turned my attention to stuff I could photograph inside of my apartment. That way I don’t have to be aware of my surroundings or dodging fellow citizens.

Constraint can be good for art. It has been - most of the time. I post the good, the great and maybe in retrospect the mediocre to bad on Instagram daily. I like to share my practice.

One day I had an idea. For the first time, I longed for fresh air. I wanted to photograph outdoors. I also thought that this might be a good thing for Jeremy. He’s a photographer. too. We are on the same page with COVID-19.

The plan was to go outdoors together. We would walk single file on the sidewalks and into the park. We would be spotters for one another and that way we could concentrate on our photography rather than fellow citizens. It will be like having the Secret Service, I told him.

This is not our first rodeo. When you’ve cared for an immunocompromised toddler, a global pandemic is like riding a bike.

Jeremy was gifted a period of time. While he was photographing my only job was to watch from all angles to see if fellow citizens were headed our way. One time, as he bent to get a different angle on a subject, I told him we had to move along. When the spotter tells you to move, you’ve got to listen and act immediately.

In the park, my Secret Service detail involved scouting emptier parts of the park, away from vectors on bikes, the brazenly unmasked, and the coughers. When I was on duty I did not look at my phone or become distracted.

Then it was my turn to have a protector. All of the time spent photographing inside the bathroom and out the window had a way of informing this work. I could keep busy in a very small area. There are no trees or grass inside of my apartment. That was enough to keep me engaged.

We didn’t have free reign, but that was okay. Like I said before, constraint can be good for art.

As we walked home, we took a circuitous route in order to avoid fellow citizens clogging the sidewalks. We walked single file at my insistence. The breeze and air invited us to do this again. We will.

You can follow me on Instagram at to see my recent photographic series called Shelter in Place and Protected Photographs. I also have pre-pandemic imagery there too.

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