On Steinway
(in a pandemic)
This is what got me through the first year of the Pandemic. Photographing the ordinary, completely unordinary, life on the streets in Queens. In my fifth year living in Astoria, Steinway Street became the place that kept drawing me and my camera back.
Books can be written about Steinway, its history, and the unbelievable density of cultures, identities, and characters. An endless hustle, sculpted by the collisions of colonization, immigration and capitalist America.
These photos were taken during the height of the pandemic, prior to the vaccine. As with so many parts of life, Astoria seemed completely changed and completely unchanged all at once. These images are just a small snap in time along the dense, elusive, often frenetic Steinway Street and the blocks caught in its orbit.