Getting Old and Getting Out In New York City
Herb Bardavid
Herb Bardavid has been travelling around NYC photographing older people and listening to their stories and publishing them on his blog.
https://www.blog.herbbardavid.com/home-page
We are truly fortunate to have arranged for Herb to come talk to us and share his amazing photographs and stories and experiences on his journey to make the invisible population more visible.
Living in NYC can be easy or hard for older people with disabilities. Crossing the street when cars and trucks are turning, avoiding pedestrians, and squeezing past can be frightening. Sidewalks are often congested, uneven and broken. Doors are heavy to open especially when using a walker or scooter. However, living in NYC also means easy access to supermarkets-and those that deliver; pharmacies' doctors and hospitals; parks and kneeling buses. What a phenomenal place to live.
Many of the subjects in this project live alone. All of them speak about the importance of getting out rather than staying cloistered in their apartments.
My goal is to make the elderly visible. Engaging and listening to their stories has connected me to them in ways which, as a photographer, I never thought possible. I have been invited into their homes, I have shared my photographs with them. I have made new friends.
Herb Bardavid has been passionate about photography since he was twelve when he converted his family's only bathroom into a darkroom. Herb has had eight shows. His first was in Cambridge, MA., in 1969, MA. He has been published in the WBAI Folio, the Gotham Gazette, and PDN Photo Magazine. As a psychotherapist, Herb sees things others may not. He views the world and its people through his own set of lenses, seeking change.