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NYB West Broadway: 70×105 cm ed 16 / 84x126cm ed 14

The last New York power shutdown

 

I’m used to working in bad weather, so I jumped on a plane to New York as soon as I heard the news about Hurricane Sandy.

Then a friend who told me he was living by candlelight invited me to his home on 24th Street one early evening. That’s where the shock was – I would never have imagined the city WITHOUT lights! There was really nothing, but NOTHING! No store signs, no traffic lights, no street lamps. The entire southern part of New York had been plunged into darkness. The streets had become ghostly, and every pedestrian silhouette was barely visible and immediately disquieting.

The only lights present in these images are the headlights of cars – and the sky lit up by the rest of the city. The small white lines are pedestrians’ flashlights, and the purple ones are the lights of the numerous police cars that patrolled the southern tip of Manhattan.

Manhattan so powerful so fragile.

 

Christophe Jacrot

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