By Charis Morgan

A bustling city once teeming with urbanites on crowded sidewalks and in jam-packed subway cars comes to a grinding halt. Save an eerie silence made more deafening by the occasional ambulance siren, the events of the city beyond our apartment walls are largely left to the imagination. For most, this has been the picture of New York City ever since Governor Andrew Cuomo’s shelter-in-place order effectively shut it down in late March and indefinitely altered daily life for millions. A smaller population of New Yorkers, however, have been uniquely privy to public life in the age of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the case for the many essential employees currently working in New York City including messenger and street photographer Kurt Boone.

Kurt Boone © Nicholas Sansone

Kurt Boone wearing a face mask after Gov. Cuomo’s mandate on April 15th, 2020. © Nicholas Sansone

Every morning at 7:30 A.M., Kurt Boone–a veteran New York City courier of over 20 years–prepares for a full day of making essential deliveries around the five boroughs. After checking the news for the latest coronavirus updates before leaving his New Jersey apartment, Boone arrives at the World Trade Center in Manhattan only to greet a different city each day. In the U.S. epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, around 1,000 new coronavirus patients are admitted to hospitals daily. More and more quintessential New York establishments shutter their doors, and the gripping effects of this crisis are increasingly felt by all. Worse, there is no clear end in sight. For Boone, these scenes of strife and desolation are “surreal and depressing.” As a longtime documentarian of urban culture, Boone feels a responsibility to show the world how this pandemic is unfolding in New York City.

“Photographs generally don’t lie,” said Boone. “So, in my photographs, you see the city that trades billions of dollars each day is brought to a halt. Miles and miles of retailers, office buildings, restaurants, bars, clubs and everything else in between are shut down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.” Boone’s images, which he makes along his delivery routes, corroborate this prevailing narrative. This is not business as usual for most New Yorkers but little has changed for some.

Between delivering prescription medications to private residences and capturing expansive views of deserted city streets, Boone has also trained his lens on the more intimate details of this global pandemic. While he has encountered hundreds of essential workers and emergency personnel performing heroic acts of service across New York, Boone’s photographs of subway performers, can collectors, and front desk receptionists have imbued even the most inconspicuous and commonplace New York scenes with amplified significance. We now live in a world where answering the phone can be a matter of life or death.

Moreover, the coronavirus has left many such laborers with few options. Canners who spend many of their days searching through curbside waste, disappearing behind bags full of recyclable containers worth only 5 cents a piece, stand out against this newly barren cityscape. Buskers perform to a distant audience of only a few. This is a different picture of essential work– otherwise nonessential labor that is backed by neither regulated health and safety precautions nor government sponsored social programs including unemployment assistance. There are few social protections for workers in this sector which is made up largely of undocumented immigrants and people of color. These are two groups that data shows have been especially vulnerable to this fatal virus.

This new reality for essential workers around the United States and around the world feels somehow as uncertain as it feels certain. Boone’s photographs illustrate the balancing act that so many of us, whether essential or nonessential, find ourselves now performing. The facts of our circumstances change on the hour and yet we are hostage to the steady effects of uncertainty. In this new existence, our estrangement from one another can be as frustrating as our togetherness is comforting. It is clear in Boone’s photographs that in a time when monotony seems like our new normal, the unexpected–often revealing itself in moments that otherwise go unnoticed or ignored–flourishes.

Our city which is typically powered by busyness and distraction is stripped bare. We as a community–as a society–are faced perhaps more profoundly than before with a pivotal question: how do we define work and thus support all workers as we move forward from this crisis? For Queens based photographer Nicholas Sansone, who has documented some of Boone’s travels during the pandemic, this question has never been more prudent. “The experience of working with Kurt has helped to put things into perspective and made me consider what ‘essential’ means,” said Sansone. “I think it’s important for people to understand and remember that in addition to health care professionals, there are other essential workers putting their lives at risk. I want people to understand who the word essential more broadly applies to. Most people have always considered doctors and nurses essential, and they are, but there is a whole group of workers we’ve all been taking for granted. This pandemic is shedding light on their importance, and my hope is that things will change after this, that those people will get the recognition and compensation they deserve.”

All images courtesy Kurt Boone and Nicholas Sansone.