My Work | Chinatown's Lockdown

Chinatown's Lockdown by Tewfic El-Sawy on Exposure  (Scroll Down on Image)
On April 15, 2020 (and April 22) I chanced out of self isolation with my camera for a walk though the neighborhood of Chinatown to view for myself how the NYC lockdown had affected its shops, restaurants and other small businesses. It was my first outing with a camera, and I was apprehensive as to what I would find.

I restricted my walk to Grand Street, Mott, Pell and Bayard...streets I knew very well from my frequent street photography outings, and which had restaurants and businesses I had been to and enjoyed. 

Having read that knowledgeable people thought the businesses might not survive, and didn't think Chinatown, as we know it, will ever be the same again, I was hoping they had been overly pessimistic. After my walk, I saw faint glimmers of hope but realized that to bring Chinatown back to where it had been, will take enormous effort and investment. It's been done after 9.11 so there's always hope it will rise again.

As stay-at-home policies were gradually instituted, Chinatown — along with other high-traffic destination Manhattan neighborhoods like Midtown — further emptied, leaving haunted, vacant streets with a fraction of its businesses still operating. Whereas there had previously been almost 300 restaurants in Chinatown, almost all have now closed except for a handful who survive by offering take-out and delivery. I hope these will persevere, grow and pull the rest of Chinatown's small businesses. I added captions under the photographs for more information.

I purposefully darkened my photographs in post processing, to reflect the situation. 

Subject to there being no deterioration in the COVID-19 situation, I hope to return to Chinatown on a weekly basis and continue photographing its streets and stores and in so doing, keep my finger on its pulse.