Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.

A chance for folks to dress up and indulge their fantasies. To become someone else for a night, or maybe just to become themselves for a night.

That love of the theatrical has always been a big part of my photography. Training my lens on people in costume, whether vintage, cosplay, or fantasy. The spooky season gives me endless opportunities to capture folks wearing their wildest.

I’ve been participating in the parade since moving to the city in 1981. It used to be a much smaller local event winding through the narrow streets of Greenwich Village, but has grown into a massive parade with over 50,000 marchers going along Sixth Avenue, watched by over a million spectators. I remember early on, not long after moving to the city, I was working in Midtown and had no time to get into my costume before heading downtown. So I changed into my costume in the middle of a city bus at rush hour.

I started photographing the event in 2004. The hard part was always coming up with a costume that allowed me to take photos. No mask. No makeup to smear on my camera. Hands free so I could hold my camera. And something that made sense for a person to even be carrying a camera. After years of trial and error, I finally settled on wearing a Pope outfit and going as the Pope-arazzi.

As the Pope-arazzi, I would enter the pre-parade area where the big floats and groups were getting set up and do portraits, then march along the route photographing the regular New Yorkers who had spent countless hours creating incredible costumes. These are my people!

Another major Halloween event in NYC is the Procession of the Ghouls at St. John the Divine, a massive cathedral in Morningside Heights and the largest cathedral in North America. Every year they show a silent horror movie with live accompaniment on the cathedral organ, followed by the Procession itself. A gigantic skeleton rises from the altar and ghoulish creatures lurch down the aisle as if rising from the bowels of hell.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to go. The event has become so popular that both performances sell out within an hour of tickets being released. Easier to get Taylor Swift tickets. But I still have my photos from past performances to remind me.

A photographer friend turned me on to the Asbury Park Zombie Walk a while back. Thousands of people turn up dressed as zombies to walk, or more accurately shamble, down the boardwalk. Zombie costumes are interesting because the look is really about what the unfortunate soul was doing when they turned. I have pictures of Amish zombies, bride and groom zombies, prom queen zombies, and even a SpongeBob zombie. The walk falls on a popular weekend for weddings, so I don’t get to join in very often, but when I do the photo ops are endless.

I also stumbled across a zombie walk right here in the city. A number of years back I came upon one in the East Village and ended up hanging out in the dive bar where everyone had gathered to put on their makeup. I got some great portraits there, and then the whole undead crowd shambled out into the streets. At one point they surrounded a city bus. Another time, a cab. I still wonder if there were tourists in that cab asking themselves whether they were actually under zombie attack.

It’s a very different vibe from Asbury Park. The city version means much more interaction with non-zombies, and that makes for its own kind of photo opportunity.

I’ve had the good fortune to attend many Halloween Balls in NYC over the years. I love going because they give me the chance to spend a few real minutes with each subject and create a considered portrait. Very different from the work I do at parades and street events. Inspired by horror films and old hollywood. 

The last few years I’ve discovered the Halloween festivities right here in Brooklyn Heights. For decades I’d been heading to the Village parade, completely unaware of what was happening in my own neighborhood.

A few years back I was getting over an illness and didn’t have the energy to make the trip downtown. So I just wandered outside with my camera. What I found stopped me in my tracks: doggy costume contests, gigantic displays of hundreds of jack-o-lanterns, costumed kids and adults running from brownstone to brownstone, neighbors sitting outside in costume with gigantic bowls of candy. It felt completely different from the big parade. More intimate. More charming. Almost like a small town, somehow, in the middle of one of the world’s great cities.

That is now my tradition. I head out with my camera and my Halloween jacket, capture the puppies in costumes and then the kids running and grabbing candy, photograph the grown-ups modeling their costumes on the street, and come home with my pockets full of fun-size candy bars.