New York: A Personal Tribute

Recently, I had an email from the Senior Photo Editor of the New York Post newspaper.

"Was this my image?" she wrote, including a link to a photo I'd posted on The Library's blog.
(There were no salutations whatsoever, which quietly annoyed me. When you're writing to a stranger, the least you can do is start off politely.)

"Yes," I replied. (Equal lack of salutation.) "It was. I have the original. It was taken in New York in May this year."

Then I pressed the 'return' key a few lines, before typing the polite but pointed line: "Did you have a query about it?"

I've heard nothing since.
It's a mystery.

Did she want to use my image(s) for the Post? Did she think the photo was hers? Or did she simply think it was a crappy pic and that I should stop waving my camera around? Who knows? The no-salutation Photo Editor never elaborated on her curious email.

So I'm gonna post a few more photos of New York. Let's see if she writes again.

Nobody needs to be reminded that New York is going through a tough time right now. I saw that Marc Jacobs lost his West Village home – "Everything was destroyed!" he said as he was snapped wandering uptown with his dog with a lost expression on his face. But he's just one of thousands. I can't imagine how difficult it must be having cold showers in freezing conditions. Or even running low on battery power, let alone food and alcohol! 

I was going to do a post on writing today, but it seems inappropriate in light of what's happening in Manhattan, New Jersey and the rest of the eastern US states. So I'd like to do a little tribute. To quote Ms Liza Minelli, who wrote and sang the 'New York, New York' song for Martin Scorsese's 1977 film of the same name –

"Come on... 

Come through...

New York, New York..."

New York, we're thinking of you.
We know you'll come through.

BTW, here's the YouTube link to Liza singing this iconic tune in the final famous scene of the movie. Try watching it and not feel chills up your spine when the first keys are played. {link here}

And if you'd like to donate to help the people of New York or New Jersey get back on track, you can do so by sending food, water and other supplies (toiletries / clothes, etc) to Feeding America; World Vision, the Red Cross, or simply jump on Twitter and search for #sandyvolunteer.



PS And yes, if anyone's asking, these are all my pix. You can recognise my photos. They're mostly on a lean.

Coming up very shortly in a future post: Some great new New York hotels to consider for your next visit...

Writing A Book: The Stories Of Your Lives

I want to tell you a story. It's a good one. I hope it will inspire you. You'll see the point of it very soon.

Last Friday morning, on a crowded Eurostar train from London to Paris, as the landscape morphed from Kent fields to Normandy farmlets, I heard the most incredible life story. It was the story of the woman sitting next to me. Well, the story of her father, really.

And what a story it was.

Her father, now 92, had just begun working in the Diplomatic Corps in London. He was only 19. One night, at a summer reception, he met a beautiful young French girl. She was just 15. Unperturbed by the age difference, they spoke of their dreams, their hopes and ambitions, and their lives in London. It turned out they lived just streets apart.  The love, he said, was instantaneous. "I couldn't imagine my life without her," he explained. The date was June 2, 1939. The Second World War was just around the corner.

When France declared war on Germany three months later, the French Girl's parents sent a telegram requesting that she come home. They needed her, they said. So she said a tearful goodbye to The Diplomat, wiped her eyes, and courageously took a train back to Cherbourg.

For the next four years, The Diplomat worked in the war offices, wondering if he'd ever see her again. Eventually, he met an English girl, and – not knowing if the war would ever end – married her. It was a quiet affair. His heart, you see, was still in Cherbourg. The French Girl, meanwhile, had started witnessing atrocities that a teenager should never see. By then, the Germans had brought in the Mongolians to do their dirty work and the deaths were horrendous. After she'd witnessed an infant being crucified, she decided to join the French Resistance. She was only 19. Her uncle was already in the Resistance, and high up by that point in time, and when he heard that her name was on a German 'hit list', he smuggled her out of the country. She was sent to London, where she was given a safe house. It was two streets away from The Diplomat. Unbeknown to them both, they lived just metres apart.

For the next 10 years, she worked, settled down, married an Englishman, had four children (The Diplomat also had four), and tried to forget the war. And a young dashing Englishman she'd met at the age of 15. But she couldn't. Haunted by her memories of love and loss, she told her husband everything. He simply said that he loved her all the more.

Fast forward 40 years. In an ironic twist, the French Woman's husband had also become a diplomat, and had decided to attend a conference in Geneva. By chance, he saw The Diplomat's name on the seating chart. He decided to say hello. "Why don't you visit us one day?" he said generously. "My wife would really love to see you again." The two couples met for dinner.  The conversation was warm, polite, quietly sentimental, dignified. They decided to stay in touch. A letter here and there.

Both couples grew old, as people do. The French Woman's husband passed away. So she moved back to France, to the town of her birth. But still she kept in touch with her first love. The letters continued for the next 20 years.

Two decades later, The Diplomat's wife died also. He waited for a respectable length of time. And then he bought a ring, and took the first train to Cherboug.

The Diplomat and the French Woman were married under a lemon tree in her garden, on a bright sunny day in June. The year was 2005. He was 85 years old. She was 81. It had been 66 years since they'd last kissed.

They haven't stopped kissing since.

I'm telling you this story because this month, November, is NaNoWriMo Month. It's that time of year when would-be writers are challenged to begin writing a book. A book of 50,000 words. To be written in a month. It's a tough challenge, but thousands attempt it. It's a fantastic way to begin writing, with a deadline looming in front of you. The pressure usually forces the words to come.

Everybody has a story inside them. Everybody has a narrative of their own to tell. Perhaps you can begin writing yours down?

Go on. You've got a month to do it.

Tim Walker: When Photography Meets Magic

I had the greatest fortune to be able to catch the wonderful Tim Walker exhibition of fashion photographs at Somerset House in London last week. The show, which had just opened, was so incredibly beautiful, and the execution so astonishing, that people walked around in mute awe. You could barely hear the exclamation marks that were dropped, one by one, as people passed the extraordinary portraits.

For those of who you aren't familiar with Mr Walker, he's one of fashion's most creative photographers. Where a normal Vogue shoot may take a day or two and a team of perhaps ten people, Tim Walker's shoots are epic productions that rival a Martin Scorsese film. A normal day might involve staging a shoot in an art deco mansion in India that hasn't been used since the days of the Raj. (And flying a team of costume designers, stylists, models, make-up artists and assistants over to help with the set construction.) A 'quiet' day may involve dressing someone like Alexander McQueen up in full 18th century costume and shooting him in a derelict warehouse in the East End. His work is magical, ethereal, artistic and romantic. It's the stuff of Lewis Carroll, J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis. With a little Cecil Beaton thrown in. One checklist of requirements for a thirty-eight page Vogue shoot called 'Fashion Pantomime' included 80 white rabbits, 20 ballerinas, 17 mirrored geese, 250 ostrich eggs (sprayed gold), a box of giant plastic hands, 20 Christmas trees and a Rolls-Royce. (It was cheaper, Vogue discovered, to buy a Rolls-Royce than to hire one especially for the shoot, because no-one had any idea of what exactly Walker might do with it.) It is a credit to Vogue that they didn't baulk at the cost. They knew they would be rewarded with a series of spectacular images.

If you're in London over the next few months, do try and make time to see this beautiful, beautiful show. It's free. But I would have happily paid 20 pounds and queued for an hour to see Tim Walker's theatrical magic.

PS The venue, Somerset House, was amazing too. I had no idea such an architectural gem existed.

timwalkerphotography.com