Aging In NYC: Photographer Captures Senior Life In the City

Joe is 90 years old. I met him while he was sitting on his walker at 73rd Street and Broadway smoking his pipe. Joe was a doorman for 27 years, only a few blocks from where he was sitting. If you look closely at his left eye you will see a bandage over his left lens. He lost vision in that eye after a failed surgery.

Joe was born in Charleston, South Carolina and related to me some of his stories of the Jim Crow era. He left South Carolina by joining the army.

I commented that you don't often see someone smoking a pipe these days. He said he used to smoke cigarettes, but he gave them up about 30 years ago. He smoked Pall Mall as did his mother. He told of how he would sneak her's after he would run out of his own. He remembers a carton of cigarettes costing $1.50.

Joe said getting out was really important to him. He lives alone and like many other New Yorkers, he said getting out makes him feel alive and keeps him from feeling lonely.

Herb Bardavid is a social worker with a passion for photography going back to his childhood years. When he was 12 years old, Bardavid commandeered his family's only bathroom to serve as a part-time dark room for developing photos.

At his wife's suggestion, the Upper West Side resident chose to chronicle the lives of New York City senior citizens for a year-long photography project. Bardavid, who's in his 70s, is inspired by New York City's elders who don't let their age get in the way of how they live their lives.

"Elderly people in New York City are sometimes invisible," Bardavid told Patch. "People walk by and nobody pays attention to them. So when I stop people they're are not only surprised but also happy because people don't often talk to them."

Check out Bardavid's blog here.

Photos by Herb Bardavid