‘Seeing 80,000 people leave the city was ominous, and fascinating’: Aaron Stern’s best phone picture

The New York-based photographer on how he glimpsed the collapse of civilisation during Covid - in the window of a pizza place

When Aaron Stern considers what inspires his work, he is reminded of the Leonard Cohen lyric, There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." In March 2020, as New York City began to shutter and fall silent, the photographer's busy schedule cleared. He had nothing to do but walk and shoot. Seeing 80,000 people empty out of the city I've called home for 21 years - it was ominous, and fascinating," he says. I was trying to find some humour, some lightness."

In the end, he found it in the window of Arturo's, a pizza place in Lower Manhattan. The fake relic brought the collapse of Rome to mind, and the fall of that civilisation and democracy, while the glamorous Joe DiMaggio era that once embodied New York is also long gone," he says. Here I am, in this post-truth era, post-Capitol attacks, with this disease that's killing thousands, and I stumbled across this juxtaposition of two previous eras that have also ended. It captured just what I was thinking about."