By Victor J. Blue
March 22, 2021

NEW YORK — In the spring of 2020, as the first wave of the pandemic peaked and crashed over the city, I photographed inside three hospitals as their staffs worked to save as many people as they could from Covid-19. More than 20,000 people died in New York City from March to June. The richest city in the world became one of the places most devastated by the pandemic.

The uncertainty and mystery of the virus and the sickness it caused made it difficult to communicate exactly what was happening inside the hospitals to the outside world. It felt like reporting from a distant country just blocks away. Inside the ICU, the pain and loss were muffled by the layers of protective equipment everyone wore. Sometimes the face shields would fog and cloud our view; sometimes the double masks muted the catch in our voices as we spoke. Journalists conveyed the exasperation of the critical care doctors as they tried everything they could, and still their patients died.

Each day inside the hospitals, I took thousands of digital photographs and dozens of video clips. I knew the speed with which we published our stories was vital to helping the public understand the unfolding catastrophe. But I also carried a small, aging film camera, called an XPan, slung around my neck. It was a hassle, not as fast and nimble as a digital camera, and mostly it got in the way, but I would pause and lift it every so often to record a scene.

I only shot 14 rolls of black-and-white film, which these images are drawn from. In the middle of so much loss, to commit these moments to film was a way for me to hang on to the painful solidarity of witnessing it. I think I made these images to help remember not just what it looked like, but how it felt to be there.

A year later, with vaccinations spreading and the promise of another spring approaching, it feels like waking up from some horrible dream. But the experience of those six weeks I spent passing back and forth through the looking glass as I worked in and out of the New York hospitals has marked me, like the last year marked us all, permanently. I felt like a messenger of terrible news, trying to bridge the gap between those devastated by the pandemic and those waiting to feel its touch. It is hard, even now, to explain to people who were not there what the awful weight of that knowledge felt like. I hope it is somewhere in these pictures.

A sign at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge warns New Yorkers to be vigilant about infection in mid-March 2020. New York settled into a new normal as the Covid-19 pandemic widened and the city saw its first deaths from the virus. (Victor J. Blue)

Motionless gray skies clung to interminable days as the city locked down under quarantine. On April 18, 2020, I wrote to myself: “The pandemic has us in a state of perpetual winter. It feels like the sun will never come.” At night, the sound of the sirens, moaning uninterrupted up and down the empty streets, heralded the rising hospitalizations and deaths. It could all feel far away, until New Yorkers turned a corner and passed one of the dozens of refrigerated trailers installed outside some of our hospitals. Suddenly, the proximity to the experience of ceaseless death became impossible to ignore, the sadness lingering as if it were the very air we were scared to breathe.

Two people jog as fog envelops a nearly empty Brooklyn Bridge in mid-March 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Nurses wait to screen patients for Covid-19 at a walk-up testing tent erected by The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 23, 2020. The 175-year-old facility, a small, independent hospital, was transformed as it helped the city that had become the epicenter of the crisis in the United States. (Victor J. Blue)

New York’s hospitals became crucibles — vessels of uncommon resistance reinforced by the remarkable people who worked there. The hospital was the place where knowledge and compassion made a stand against the virus. People were sick, and they were dying, and they went there to be saved. The simplicity of that calculus was what drove me to keep going back inside and document the crisis up close.

Hospital workers screen patients for Covid-19 inside the walk-up testing tent at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 23, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

A hospital worker waits to help take samples from patients to test for Covid-19 at a walk-up testing tent erected by The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 23, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Critical care providers help a Covid-19 patient at the Surgical ICU of The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 30, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Dr. James Gasperino, seated at the computer at center, leads the morning rounds meeting for ICU staff at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 30, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Dr. Sam Kwauk, center, performs a tracheostomy on a Covid-19 patient at the Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 27, 2020. Tracheostomies, which open up the windpipe, were dangerous because they potentially exposed hospital staff to the virus. They could be lifesaving for patients, however. (Victor J. Blue)

Dr. Yijiao Fan, 31, an oral surgery resident sick with the virus, rests in a ward dedicated to Covid-19 patients at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on March 23, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

New York's Madison Avenue empty of visitors on April 5, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Dr. Stella Hahn, right, pulmonary critical care attending physician, talks to colleagues as they help a recently extubated patient breathe in an intensive care unit at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens on May 16, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

David, the son of Precious Anderson, 31, in the neonatal care unit at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 9, 2020. Precious Anderson delivered David by cesarean section while she was on a ventilator battling Covid-19. Both mother and son recovered. (Victor J. Blue)

Nurse Angela Lewis, 60, places a fetal heart rate monitor on Basharrie McKenzie, 36, who was 29 weeks pregnant and sick with Covid-19, in her isolation room at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 5, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Critical care providers help turn over a Covid-19 patient in an ICU at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens on April 10, 2020. In the early days of the pandemic in New York, critical care physicians struggled to develop effective ways to treat the lung damage the disease caused. Turning patients on their stomachs, though labor intensive, was one of the simplest and most effective tools at their disposal. Long Island Jewish expanded to operate eight ICUs in the hospital and treated some 2,530 coronavirus patients in the first months of the pandemic, the second highest in New York City. (Victor J. Blue)

Critical care providers treat a Covid-19 patient in an ICU at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens on April 10, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Firefighters cheer for front-line hospital workers during the daily 7 p.m. observance at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 16, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

Eliana Marcela Rendón, 32, cries as she listens to Dr. Eric Gottesman and other hospital staff members explain how they will withdraw ventilation from her grandmother Carmen Evelia Toro, 74, at North Shore University Hospital in Queens on April 19, 2020. Toro was admitted on March 20 and was intubated a week later. After two weeks on a ventilator, she was steadily declining and the family agreed with doctors to remove her breathing support. (Victor J. Blue)

With her husband, Edilson Valencia, standing by her side and Elisa Vicari, a social worker, holding a tablet to livestream the event for family, Eliana Marcela Rendón kisses her grandmother, Carmen Evelia Toro, goodbye as she dies from Covid-19 in the ICU of North Shore University Hospital in Queens on April 19, 2020. (Victor J. Blue)

A critical care provider monitors a patient in the ICU at The Brooklyn Hospital Center on April 27, 2020. Many patients in intensive care required dialysis as well as intubation as Covid-19 damaged their kidneys as well as their lungs. (Victor J. Blue)

A woman dying from Covid-19 lies in bed after staff withdrew ventilation in the ICU at The Brooklyn Hospital Center at the end of April. The patient had not responded to treatment, and after consulting with family, doctors decided to shift from ventilation to palliative care. (Victor J. Blue )

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Photo Editor: Shahrzad Elghanayan / NBC News