New York, Eighteen Years in the Making
In 2008, I had a trip to New York planned. Flights almost booked, savings ready, an itinerary half-formed in my head.
Then the credit crunch arrived and took my New York fund with it.
New York would have to wait.
It waited eighteen years, until 8 September 2026.
The Curse
I should have known something was coming. Before I even left home, I managed to break my e-reader. Fifteen years of reading in bed without incident, and it chose the night before we left to give up.
Fine. I’d read on my phone.
On the first day, I tripped and went down hard on my camera. Possibly cracked a rib. Definitely broke my glasses. The camera survived, which tells you everything about where my priorities lie.
And then, on the last day, the latch on my Nikon F80 gave up entirely.
Apparently, the curse still had unfinished business.
At the time, I was disappointed and upset. Eighteen years of waiting, and now this. But it brought me back to something I’d taken from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance some fifteen years ago: the interruptions and frustrations are part of the journey too.
Easier to appreciate afterwards, admittedly.
I’m choosing to read all of this as the universe settling a very old debt in instalments.
The Reality
I’ll admit I had reservations about coming. The world is a complicated place right now, and New York sits at the centre of a lot of it. But the experience of walking its streets dismantled most of those reservations within the first hour.
New York is extraordinary. Loud, layered, contradictory, and absolutely, relentlessly itself. For a flâneur or street photographer, it is sensory overload. Every street corner seems to offer another reason to stop.
Visiting the 9/11 Memorial was something else entirely. Deeply humbling is the only phrase that comes close. Standing there, reading the names, you feel the weight of the place in a way no photograph or documentary ever quite prepares you for.
I took no photographs there. Some moments don’t need a camera.
Bringing the Kids
I brought my two adult children with me, and sharing this trip with them is something I will carry for the rest of my life.
There is a particular pleasure in seeing a city for the first time alongside people you love. You see it through their eyes as well as your own. You stop at different things, notice different details, argue about where to eat.
The photographs I made here are good, I think. But the memories we made between the frames are better.
Before we left, my daughter and I debated whether it was worth taking some film. I originally said no.
Looking back through the photographs for this post, I’m so glad I changed my mind. Shooting film was a faff at times, but those colour photographs are something that will last a lifetime. I’m glad she talked me into it.
The Photograph
This one is a cliché. I know it. New York has been photographed from this angle, in this light, by ten thousand photographers before me — and it will be photographed by ten thousand more.
I didn’t care. This is a shot I’d wanted to take for eighteen years, and finally standing there taking it felt like closing a loop.
Sometimes the familiar pictures are the ones that mean the most. Their value is personal. You were there, and you finally made the photograph you’d carried in your head.
I’m pressing upload on 16 October 2026, a month after returning home on 14 September. It has taken me a little while to put the trip into words.
I know I’m going back. Whether that means this time next year or sooner, time and finances will decide. I most certainly left my heart in New York City.
Looking back, the broken things make quite a list. But they aren’t what I think about first. I think about walking those streets with my children, and how glad I am that we finally went.
A couple of photographs from this trip are available as prints in my Etsy shop. If you’d like a little New York on your wall, you can browse them here.
Until next time, keep snapping.
