2022

This one was a long-time coming. 18 years, in fact. Why? In 2005 – the first year I didn’t make a card - I had the idea, I even made the prop that would say “Happy Holidays” and, yet, life was hectic. In December of 2005, when I would usually make my card, I was in my 3rd year of medical school, on a surgery rotation which was quite grueling, and which had a strict schedule to adhere to – including when I got to take time off. I had a trip planned to Puerto Vallarta over New Year’s that year and by the time I left, I hadn’t made the card yet, so I brought my props with me. My friend’s husband took photos of me on the beach with my NYC props, but it didn’t quite work. I returned to New York, dropped right back into my surgery rotation and that year thus went by. Each year thereafter, I had the idea I wanted to do – in fact, many ideas have accumulated (and many have come and gone, some envisioned scenarios no longer in existence after all these years) – but somehow I lost the ability to make it happen.

Each year since 2005, I would call Geoffrey and say, “This year I’m going to do a holiday card!” and then that year would pass. Until finally, I realized it had been 16 years, then 17 years and now as of 2022, 18 years since my last card. This was an important part of me that had fallen by the wayside and it was a big desire of mine to bring it back. In the meantime, I started to realize there were whole swaths of close friends and younger family members who had no idea about this part of my creative life. Unless you knew me pre-2004, you had no idea I made these cards.

Then 2020 happened. While many people were forced to have lots of downtime, as a doctor in a pandemic, it was the opposite for me. Given all that occurred in the world and in our lives that year and all the things that were stripped away by necessity of lockdown, it also seemed like a time ripe for a restart of things that were important to me that had gone away by attrition and not by choice. I had an idea.

The outdoor dining structures had popped up during the pandemic and the landscape of the city now looked completely different as the restaurants spilled out into the streets. The structures started out looking very makeshift – with orange cones and yellow caution tape delineating the part of the street claimed for dining. Eventually they got built out fairly elaborately – with more protection from the cars passing by, with walls and roofs and windows and lights and heaters and fancy decorations. As the city, which was decimated by Covid, resurrected itself and came back to life – these dining sheds seemed to be a fitting and symbolic setting for me as I did the same for my holiday cards.

The restaurant on the ground floor of our apartment building was closed completely through the early days/months of lockdown. They only re-opened once outdoor dining was allowed in June of 2020. It was summer and since the waitstaff was serving outdoor tables only, they all wore short sleeved shirts. As the weather got colder in the fall and winter and indoor dining was still not allowed, I watched as the waiter outfits morphed adding on sweaters and then puffy down coats. By December of 2020, indoor dining had briefly restarted at half-capacity and then was pretty quickly shut down again leaving outdoor dining as the only option through the winter. The waiters were in full winter-weather mode.

If I’d gotten it together in 2020, my idea was to dress as a waiter in an outdoor dining shed, with mask and hat and puffy coat on (they were still wearing masks outside at that time), and a label on a wine bottle that would say “Finally 2021” – since at that point, we all just wanted to get 2020 behind us (unbeknownst to us, the pandemic would continue far beyond 2020). To that end, I looked around at different restaurants and what their wait staff wore and concluded that a steak house waiter with their uniform of white shirt, vest and bow tie was the most instantly recognizably as “waiter” even if it was layered over with winter clothing. On December 23rd (!) 2020, I scouted a steakhouse (by enjoying a meal there) – Benjamin Prime on E 40th Street. I took photos of their waiters so I could emulate them, took photos of their outdoor dining shed to think about how to stage the photo, showed the manager my prior (now ancient) cards and explained what I wanted to do – and he said yes, I could shoot it at their restaurant! On December 24th, I borrowed a white shirt and bow tie from my friend Reuben. I designed the wine bottle label. But then life intervened, it was too last minute, I stalled out and the moment passed. I vowed to get an earlier start next year.

Throughout 2021, I continued to collect costume elements for my waiter outfit thinking I could do it in December 2021 and be super ready for it. I ordered a vest and aprons from Amazon, and I bought a gray hat and black mask and puffy jacket to complete the outdoor-waiter look.

As a result of the pandemic, back when we were wiping our groceries down and there was a run on hand sanitizer, most restaurants changed to using QR codes instead of menus to be as contactless as possible. So my idea for the 2021 card was to still be a waiter, but this time to be holding a sign with a QR code that spelled out Happy Holidays in QR-looking black and white squares. I started designing the Happy-Holidays-in-QR-code sign but couldn’t quite get it to look how I wanted. And then I got covid, along with everyone else in the December 2021 Omicron wave. I was down for the count (quarantine was 10 days back then). So it didn’t happen that year.

Enter 2022. Determined not to let one more year go by, I met with Geoff in October (unheard of!!) to start planning the shoot. Only this time my idea had become much more high-tech. Instead of 2021's idea of a QR code that was simply a design element with "happy holidays" embedded in it, I had thought of a way to bridge the old and the new in the form of an active QR code that would point to a website showcasing all of my old cards. That meant not only staging a photograph with an active QR code in it, which had to be readable in the photo, it also meant learning how to make QR codes, and learning how to build a website! (Spoiler alert: if you are here reading this now, you know how the story ends...)

I went back to Benjamin Prime in early December 2022 and the same manager from 2020 was there and remembered me when I showed him my holiday-cards-past. I asked, again, if I could shoot there. He said yes again! We scheduled it for two days later.

My costume was all ready from the year prior. I scurried to make an active QR code (with QR tiger) - which also meant buying a URL for the QR code to point to - and it also meant mocking up a website so the URL was live in order for the QR code to be able to point to. All this was done the night before the photo shoot by this tech newbie. I printed the active QR code in various paper layouts and bought all kinds of sign holders mimicking what I see restaurants using for their QR-menus. I also put it on an ipad (which I also see many restaurants use for the QR-menu). I made a Happy Holidays wine label just for good measure.

Dave agreed to be one extra and I recruited my friends Heidi and Loring to be two more. Benjamin Prime had really souped up their outdoor dining shed in the two years since I first scouted it, the waiters no longer wear masks outside, it was warm enough the day of our shoot for them not to wear hats or puffy coats too so my outfit was simplified. When I arrived, the Benjamin Prime waiters and managers were so supportive - they gave me their signature red bow tie to wear, some pens to put in my pocket, an official Benjamin Prime apron that all the waiters wear (that I got to keep) and a black faux-leather bill holder to keep in my apron pocket. They continued to take great care of us and tended to our needs for prop food and drinks, refilling the bread baskets and wine glasses as we went. (Full disclosure: Benjamin Prime still uses paper menus. They were hidden out of view for the purposes of the photograph.)

In terms of the location, I wanted to make sure it read as dining shed - which meant needing to see the outside world on all sides and the heat lamps in the ceiling needed to be visible. We shot in one direction, looking east with just one table other than ours visible (and Dave sitting at it). Later, we turned around to look west with a bigger expanse of the dining shed visible and many more tables. Just as we were getting our final shots, a group of women came in to eat dressed in red sweaters and red hats which added a vibrant background. With them came more waiters, dressed just like me (imagine that!) and suddenly the background came alive with real-life activity. When the shoot was finally over, Geoff, Dave, Loring and I enjoyed a delicious steak lunch (Heidi had to leave and missed out) and we celebrated the victory of this sisyphean task (at least the first part of it) finally being completed.

Since 18 years had passed, this is the first time digital photography came into play with these cards. That meant Geoff could shoot and then actually show me the images – the blind faith of the roll of film was gone. I will admit, it definitely made the shoot go longer (as Dave, Heidi and Loring can attest). It also meant that getting digital prints made to my liking is a whole new intricate world I had to learn (it felt more in my control when I could go to a darkroom and print them myself). That translated to getting prints made at five different labs and still feeling unsatisfied with the results. The sixth place was the winner - Quick Color Photo Lab - who worked with me until I got prints I loved. It also meant researching photo papers and whether or not I can hand-color on the photo papers used today for digital prints. First it seemed I could not (because the photo oils would absorb too quickly and not be "paintable") so I resigned myself to sending out color photos (for the first time since 1997). It just didn't feel as artistically satisfying though. So I went down the hand-coloring-of-photos rabbit hole a second time and finally figured out a way to hand-paint on these modern-day digital prints.

The tech aspect of this year's card was very daunting and, in fact, proved to be the most labor-intensive and time consuming part – hence you’re getting this in February ... [at least it’s not July!]... even though we shot the photo on December 5th, which is the earliest we'd ever shot it in all the years. I spent many many hours on the phone with Wix customer service as I learned how to put this website together. My friend Rachel spent many hours going over the copy you're reading now and helping me with the photographs. My friend Lisa helped kick me off on the design front. Geoff was peppered with many many questions as we both tried to remember the circumstances around each of the shoots in the past. It helped (actually, it was critical) that I had taken a six-month sabbatical from July through the end of the year. That's really the only way I managed to do all of this. A perfect and fitting use of my new-found time!

I had spent hours and hours and hours creating this website, and so, obviously, I wanted people who received my card to find their way here. In case they missed the fact that the QR code in the photo was live and didn't scan it, I put another QR code on the inside design of the card. My father helped me print up a bunch of these but, to me, having this second, much more obvious QR code, negated all the work I had done to ensure the QR code in the photo actually worked. Then I got another idea. In most of the prior cards, I used rubber stamps as the inside message. In the past, I would buy a new stamp each year from this funny rubber stamp store on the corner of West 12th Street and Hudson. The rubber stamp would be either holiday-themed, city-themed or somehow in keeping with the theme of that year's card - I was dependent on what I would find in the store. That store on Hudson is long gone. So I started searching. I found this tiny rubber stamp store in the East Village called Casey Rubber Stamps that feels like a walk back in time. It is stacked floor to ceiling with every kind of rubber stamp imaginable - and they make custom stamps. I showed them my design for the interior of the card, QR code and all, and they assured me the QR code would still read even as a rubber stamp. They made the custom rubber stamps for me and it thrills me to no end to be able to point a fancy iphone at a rubber stamp of a QR code and, voila, here we are!! (Twenty very special recipients will have received the non-rubber-stamped limited edition father-daughter printed cards, the rest got the rubber stamped version.)

So much has changed between 2004 and 2022 - digital photography replaced film, the world wide web became the internet and our life is carried out through computers we carry in our pockets that we call phones, we locked down, we came out of lock down, and we continue on. This year’s card was my attempt at bridging those worlds – the analog, the tradition, and the original “rules” of my holiday card with the digital, present day, app life we have all been ushered into.

With this resurrection, I am happy to finally be true to my word to myself that “this year I’m going to do a holiday card” and I’m thrilled to be able to be wishing you very happy holidays and all the best for 2023 on this new-fangled thing we call the web.

Xoxo
Danya