Advance Praise for How We Live Now (available Aug. 25, 2020)
“This is a love story—for one particular man in the love affair that began as the pandemic did, for the city of New York and its people coping with an unanticipated catastrophe, for what words can do, for the light and darkness, shade and illumination of black and white street photography, for wandering and encountering and seeing, for being truly a citizen of the city and an inhabitant of the streets. Even at a moment when we were all supposed to withdraw from each other, HOW WE LIVE NOW reaches out.” — Rebecca Solnit
“Bill Hayes has unwrapped a New York under wraps during the lockdown. He is, in his photos and writings, the great poet of the everyday.” — Edmund White
Booklist review:
“Completed in early May of this year, Hayes’ (‘Insomniac City,’ 2017) latest is an achingly timely and moving portrait, in words and photographs, of New York City during the current global COVID-19 pandemic. Describing himself as “a loner and an introvert (except when it comes to strangers),” Hayes has long celebrated the beauty of New York and its people in his street photography (previously gathered in ‘How New York Breaks Your Heart,’ 2018). Interspersed among journal-like chapters, he shares new photos, some of which are before-and-afters: a busy, brake-lit 8th Avenue in December 2019, precedes a black-and-white image from the same vantage point, the street deserted, in April of this year; a June 2019 photo of a city stoop overflowing with Pride revelers is followed by a stark image of a woman sitting alone in March 2020. Mourning his and his city’s giant losses and expressing melancholy for what may never be again, Hayes also finds joy in surprising things, like cooking for himself and joining a “metaphorical bread line” outside his favorite bookshop, and in sweet, affectingly related memories.”
Publishers Weekly review:
“In this somber reflection, author and photographer Hayes (Insomniac City) chronicles life in New York City during the Covid-19 pandemic. Hayes’s question perfectly sums up the times: ‘What if I looked out and saw no cars at all? Not one. As if every last person in Manhattan were taken by this pandemic, except for me, standing alone up here.’ Images of empty streets and subways, when juxtaposed with Hayes’s recollections—mostly of romances and amusing encounters with other New Yorkers—make for a startlingly potent contrast and show how abruptly life shifted from the pre-coronavirus world to the ‘new normal’ of today. Hayes captures acts of kindness during the pandemic: shopkeepers providing for their community, medical personnel on break or in training, and a woman making a mandala. The volume also provides an occasion for reflection, ‘In the enforced solitude and silence, you can sometimes hear yourself replaying moments in your life, things said or not said, done or not done, love expressed or not expressed, all the gratitude you’ve ever received, all the gratitude you’ve ever felt.’ Hayes’s photos movingly capture a fraught and frightening moment in history.”
