The moment came on Mother’s Day, as it happened, in front of Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Once again New Yorkers were cheering for essential workers on the front lines fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four young men stopped their car. They set up an electric organ and an amp, and one climbed on the hood. He started to sing “America the Beautiful.”
Erika, a traveling nurse who immigrated from Brazil more than 35 years ago, and who had come to New York from her home in the Carolinas to try to help, put her hand over her heart. And on her face and in her eyes at that moment was all the emotion—the hope and the fear, the weariness and determination—that defines the suffering of these times.
That Peter Turnley was the photographer who caught that moment outside Lenox Hill Hospital should not come as a surprise. Turnley has spent decades in war zones and refugee camps around the world on assignment for many publications. When he found himself locked down in New York City on March 21, nobody told him to go out on the streets. He just knew he had to. And ever since then he has posted almost daily on Facebook and on a dedicated Web page his stunning black and white images of life and death in locked down New York.
The Daily Beast is publishing just a handful of the photographs here, but among them are images that should live on as icons of these times, not only for New Yorkers, but for anyone who has survived this plague: 30-year-old Yanan (from Wuhan, no less) running across the Brooklyn Bridge in March; an MTA bus driver, hands clasped as if in prayer; paramedics in their dress uniforms around the casket of one Anthony Thomas, who had worked saving lives for 36 years before COVID-19 took his; Joel And Moshe, masked, waiting for their 83-year-old father to get out of the hospital after five weeks; and that scene on Mother’s Day, when Erika put her hand to her heart as she listened to the song.
“America the Beautiful.”
And so it is.
A family applauds essential workers from their windowsill on the Upper West Side. April 1, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
A MTA bus driver gestures at the corner of 81st and Columbus, April 4, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Grand Central Station, New York, April 18, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Rachelle and her boyfriend Rob kiss on a ferry to Staten Island, April 21, 2020. Rachelle is a traveling nurse who quit her job as a nurse in Ohio to work with coronavirus patients in an ER in a hospital in Queens, NY.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
"It is not the wedding we wanted—but it is the one we needed." The wedding of Daniel and Emily, near Central Park, April 25, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
On Easter Sunday, Anthony “Tony” Thomas died of COVID-19 related causes after working as a paramedic for 36 years. Here, his colleagues gesture during his Bay Ridge funeral service, April 30, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, April 30, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Brothers Joel and Moshe wait for the discharge of their 83-year-old father from Lenox Hills Hospital after nearly 5 weeks with COVID-19, May 7, 2020
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Two traveling nurses, Erika and Simi, embrace outside Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper Eastside of New York, May 10, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
On May 10, During the daily 7:00 p.m. eruption of applause for essential workers, four young men jumped out of their car with an organ, microphone and amplifier in tow. One man jumped up on top of the car, as another played the organ, and started to sing, “America the Beautiful” to an emotional audience of health workers.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Erika, a traveling nurse working with COVID-19 patients at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, reacts as a young man sings “America the Beautiful” from atop a car, May 10, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
At the corner of 77th and Lexington at 7:oo p.m., the healthcare workers of Lenox Hill Hospital are applauded by the residents of the Upper East Side, May 12, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Yanan, a 30 year old woman from Wuhan, China, living in New York, goes out for a jog across the Brooklyn Bridge, March 26, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley
Peter Turnley takes a self-portrait on a subway, March 29, 2020.
Courtesy Peter Turnley