New York is never empty, except on the night in January 2015 when the city ordered every car off the streets. Photographer Vivienne Gucwa walked out into the snow and found avenues without traffic, a few people strolling down the middle of the road, and streetlights glowing through the flakes. Her pictures of that silent city are some of the most memorable winter images of New York.
The January 2015 blizzard and the travel ban
The storm, known as the Blizzard of 2015 and nicknamed Winter Storm Juno by The Weather Channel, swept the north-east from 24 to 28 January 2015. Mayor Bill de Blasio warned New Yorkers to expect two to three feet of snow and to “prepare for something worse than we have seen before.”
The city ordered all vehicles off the streets by 11 p.m. on 26 January, apart from emergency and government vehicles, and the subway, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North and Amtrak services were suspended. In the end the storm tracked about 50 miles farther east than forecast, and Central Park recorded 9.8 inches (25 cm), far less than feared.
“There was a ban on all vehicles aside from snow plows and emergency services,” Gucwa told My Modern Met. “It’s the first time I have ever experienced streets that were eerily empty.”
Who is Vivienne Gucwa?
Gucwa was born and raised in Queens and has lived in Manhattan for many years. She is self-taught: she began photographing in 2009 with a simple point-and-shoot camera, learning about light, composition and colour by walking the city. In 2010 she started her blog, New York Through the Lens, and built a following of millions across social networks.
Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian and the New York Post. In 2014 she published the book NY Through the Lens and was named Sony’s tenth “Artisan of Imagery”. Snow became her signature subject, and in 2017 she followed up with New York in the Snow, a collection of the snowstorm pictures she is best known for.
How she photographs snow in the city
The pictures work because of a few simple choices. Warm streetlamps and a green traffic signal add colour to a scene that could easily turn grey. A single figure with an umbrella gives scale and a story to a wide street. Long avenues lead the eye into the distance, where lit windows glow through the falling snow.
Snow also simplifies a busy city. Pavements, cars and clutter disappear under a single white surface, and what remains is the architecture, the light and the occasional person. Gucwa has said that she loves the city’s tension between nostalgia and rapid change, and a snowstorm, when New York briefly slows down, shows that side clearly.
Photographing New York in winter
The best time to go out is during the storm or right after it, before ploughs and footsteps mark the snow. Blue hour, just after sunset, balances the sky with the streetlights, as in the Radio City picture below. Protect your camera from melting flakes with a lens hood, and let it warm up slowly in its bag when you come back inside to avoid condensation.
For another New York response to snow, explore Faust’s temporary calligraphy on parked cars. For a different historic city under winter light, see Bern’s rooftops and river views.
Related reading:
- Casey Neistat Snowboards Through New York City
- Buffalo’s November 2014 Snowstorm: From the Snow Band to the Doorstep
- American Cities in Winter: Reading the Snow and Ice Gallery
- New York’s January 2014 Snowstorm in Time-Lapse
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