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TNR photographer’s prospective: 36 hours in New York

By Craig Gunn 30/11/2016

We recently sent David Parry, one of our freelance photographers, on a pretty awesome job in New York which happened to coincide with the US presidential election day. After our shoot, David took to the streets with his camera to capture the historical hours before the results were announced. You can read David’s blog and view his incredible photos of NYC voters below:

36 HOURS IN NEW YORK

I know, it sounds like a romantic comedy but let me assure that this is not at all romantic and only funny if you’re a satirist, then it is gold. This is a blog about how purely by chance I ended up in New York City the day the most hard fought and divisive presidential elections of our generation was finally decided.

(It was a) Monday morning, I was busy photographing a Martian landscape in Trafalgar square (I know, I am constantly saying sentences that nobody ever says) when TNR at the Press Association gave me a call. “would you like to go to New York tomorrow morning?” errm yes, yes I would.

So the next morning I was on the early flight out of Heathrow doing a midair shoot for Virgin Atlantic, but that is story for another time. Having landed in the big apple, job done, I had a day and a half to myself before I flew back out. Lucky for me the eyes of the world were of course on NYC with both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump in the city on eve of a momentous presidential appointment whatever the result. With no accreditation and a little more than a tourist as far as the American press were concerned I decided to go at things from a different angle. The heart of any real election is the voters, so I went out on the streets to document them watching the results coming in.

There was a relaxed atmosphere at the Rockefeller Centre and in Times Square as thousands of Hillary supporters gathered to watch what they expected to be the inauguration of the first female president of the USA. People chatted happily (apart from the NYPD telling me to get up off the floor every 2 seconds), surrounded by the stars and stripes, cheering every democrat state victory with no Trump supporters present at all. It became more and more tense as the results were consistently too close to call. There were never very many Trump supporters, New York being largely democrat and as senator Hilary’s home ground but they increased noticeably as the night went on. You could almost see the moment it dawned on the crowd that Trump would win, there was a palpable feeling of dread before they started to drift away.

I did not see it out to the end, at midnight having been up over 24 hours and more than a little depressed over the now almost certain result, I headed for my hotel. What the legacy of this night will be remains to be seen, but you have to wonder at a society that would rather elect a reality star than a woman.