Statement : In March 2020, due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, a National State of Emergency was declared - starting a long lockdown of the New York City streets. It is now November, and we’ve had more than 570,000 cases of COVID-19, and over 30,300 deaths in NYC alone. From March through June, I found myself wondering if everyone was going to die. Every morning, as we watched daily press conferences, our Governor, Andrew Cuomo, did his best to raise spirits. The phrases he repeated almost daily - “We are New York tough”, and “NYC always bounces back” - struck a chord within me. In July, and with the Summer upon us, the number of cases began to fall, and the economy started to show signs of recovery. The streets and parks became crowded again, trash cans started their yearly overflow, and social distancing got less “distant”. In the middle of August, I got a request from Tokyo, Japan - “We want you to shoot ‘The month of September, 2020’, in New York City”. I wasn’t working as much as usual, so it was a convenient time for me to see what was happening, and had happened, to the city as a whole. I personally took this opportunity to embrace all of NYC, venturing outside my bubble in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that I had kept for months. Everyday I walked the streets carrying three cameras. Up until then, I didn’t really have any street photography experience. Once I started, I found it even more enjoyable than I had imagined. I had lived in NYC for almost six years at this point, but through this one project, I was able to see a totally new face of the city. While the news constantly showed images of a ghost town, I found New York to be far from dead. It was bursting with an energy of rebirth. I had all kinds of experiences while I was out shooting. Like the incredible view of Manhattan, from the roller-disco I went to every weekend in September. Or the loads of new friends I made at a breakdancing event (I was even invited to the next one, though I did politely refuse the whisky bottle being passed around). The diverse and hopeful people I met on the streets, all trying to regain a semblance of their old lives, and all intrigued by my intrigue in them. The heated protests of the Black Lives Matter movement in May had calmed down by September, but the institutional racism that caused them hadn’t (and hasn’t yet) gone away. Large numbers of young people still marched in the streets, carrying placards with messages they’d written in protest. New York is the toughest city in the world, but it responds with warmth when you take action to engage with it. Whether it was the fashionable young people dancing on roller skates, the elderly slowly meandering back out into their city, or the children resuming their play, everyone was just trying to enjoy their lives. Their energy, to me, all read of that strong, positive attitude Cuomo so rightly described NYC to have. Life stopped in the Spring. It returned in the Summer. Our ‘new normal’ revealed new potentials and possibilities in September. The children who had been shut away for six months started school again. That time spent at home - when parents and children didn’t have a minute apart - will never be forgotten, and will be cherished for many. In November, we saw what could be called the main event of the year (if anything could top COVID it could be this): the U.S. Presidential election. The events of 2020 kept unfolding like a Hollywood movie, and the divide between the two sides was like nothing the country had seen before. Trump’s response to the pandemic was late, many Americans weren’t wearing masks - but the people in the liberal city of New York was wearing them in high numbers. Everyone here desperately hoped for a Biden win, if only to make life - and the country - a little bit better. Personally, I’m a big fan of Vice-President elect Kamala Harris. I’m excited not just because she will be the first female VP, but also by the fact that she is the first African American, and Southeast Asian VP. I can’t help but think, that post election, as we near the end of the year, there are glimpses of a brighter future ahead for America. The world completely transformed in 2020. I’ve had the chance to capture moments of rebirth and rebuilding - of those who survived, and those who didn’t give up. This spirit and resilience is something I will forever treasure, and will forever find myself inspired by. I am deeply grateful to have spent “The month of September, 2020”, and the past six years of my life, here in New York City.