A Blizzard Stirs Memories

One of my fondest early memories as a New Yorker was a blizzard in the mid-1990s that brought the metropolis to a halt. My future husband and I were out with friends at a play and as we emerged from the theater we found the snow had risen from a few inches to nearly a foot (30 centimeters). Exiting a restaurant from dinner a bit later that night we discovered that the accumulation had nearly doubled, an epic transformation with no signs of stopping. The storm’s intensity grew in inverse proportion to the traffic, which, with the exception of a few stranded taxis, had by that point all but abandoned Manhattan. By midnight, we had a good-natured snowball fight with friends and strangers in the middle of Fifth Avenue, a spectral canyon carved between high-rises. Huffing home to our East Village walk-up through drifts three feet deep, we trudged through a silence so enveloping that it felt of a different epoch.

That mid-1990’s blizzard is the event by which I judge all other snowstorms that have descended since. While we had several whoppers in the early years of the new millennium, including an epic snowfall in 2017, in the anemic, human-altered winters of the past half-dozen years they have been unheard of.

When I learned that a big one was on its way for the weekend just past, therefore, I not only loaded up on groceries and on pet-friendly Ice-Melt to sprinkle on stairs and sidewalks, but on film: black and white and color, 35mm and 120, whatever I might need to document an event as exciting as it is uncommon. Though this storm ended up paling in comparison to the monster just described, it was still fairly formidable, dropping almost a foot of snow over a ten-hour period this past Sunday. Unlike some previous blizzards, the accumulation this time happened by daylight, giving ample opportunities for photography aimed at capturing not just the altered cityscape but the mood of New Yorkers and tourists making their way around within it.

I took the bulk of the images in this post with my Leica M3, mounted with 2 classic thread-mount lenses: a Summaron 35mm f3.5 from 1950 and an Elmar 90mm f4 from 1946. (Though I love my Barnack Leicas, the M3’s larger body is easier to manage with gloved hands on freezing days). Ilford HP 5 plus, shot at ISO 320 and pulled slightly in HC-110 development to preserve the highlight details, rendered the monochrome streetscapes in a marvelous palette of gray. Most of my “people shots” happened on color, the ever-punchy Kodak UltraMax 400 to be specific, the better to evoke brightly-colored clothing and frozen cheeks. The night after the storm, with temperatures hovering near 15 degrees F (-9 celcius), I ventured out again with a seldom-used camera, my Bronica S2A, loaded with CineStill 400D and mounting the fantastic Zenzanon MC 40mm f4 wide-angle lens. As I arrived home—cold, elated—I remembered why I rarely use that camera: a defect in the film transport system in my copy that allows me to fire the shutter repeatedly without removing the darkslide, in the process wasting not only inspiration but a potentially unlimited supply of film (I lost a half a roll in this instance; the featured photo above is one of the few that survived).

Notwithstanding this frustrating technical glitch, I’m pleased with the variety of images displayed here and their ability to evoke a slice of life in my beloved city, thirty-odd years after that epic, category-defining blizzard.

Thanks for having a look.

Ilford HP5/Leica M3

Kodak Ultramax/Leica M3

Featured Image: Speeding Delivery Scooter, Brooklyn. Bronica S2A, Zenzanon 40mm f4, CineStill 400D.

Postscript: Blizzard Number Two

When I wrote this piece I assumed the January storm I documented so minutely would be the winter weather event of the year. In late February, however, a bigger storm descended, dropping 20 inches of snow (as opposed to 11 last time). Here are five frames from round number two.

You can see more of my photos at www.leica1933.com

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