1996

Back in 1996, most newspapers were sold off of milk crates on corners. Ten years later, in 2006, the city created a plan to make all the New York City newsstands uniform – which are the kiosks we see on the streets today. But back then, this was a very familiar sight.

I was living in the west village by then, and there was this funny store across 7th Avenue that printed anything you wanted on things like t-shirts and aprons. It also could print up any newspaper headline you asked for on a fake newspaper. So I had a newspaper printed with the Happy Holidays headline. I looked around for a newspaper seller and found one around 8th Avenue in the 20s. With my fake headline in hand, I asked if I could sit down at his stand to stage the photo. He gladly said yes and gave me his official newspaper seller bib to wear for the photo. I hadn't thought to bring anyone with me as an "extra" to pretend to buy my fake newspaper so that is actually the newspaper seller himself pretending to be my customer in the 1st version (above). In the 2nd version (below), my "customer" is a homeless man who happened to be hanging around the corner where we were photographing who was also game to play the part. “He loved her to death” was the actual headline of the New York Post that day.

This was the only year that Geoffrey did not take the photograph. In my last-minute way, I probably called him (land-line to land-line, baby!) and asked him to shoot it and he was likely out of town or not available. I didn’t know yet that he actually liked to do this collaboration with me – I thought I was being a pain asking him every year – and so I asked my friend and photographer Rachel Elkind, who kindly stepped in. Afterwards, once he registered his discontent that he’d been replaced, I realized he actually wanted the gig and so it’s been he and I again ever since.

Somehow I didn’t save a hand-colored card of the 1st version for myself so the one above is simply a black and white print. One of the reasons I like that version is because of the bike messenger whizzing by in the background. (Remember bike messengers??) I hadn’t quite caught on that this yearly card-making was a thing (my thing) and that I’d want to save copies of them for myself for posterity (which apparently has arrived in the form of this website).