Love of the Irish

A Dublin photographer recalls a magical winter spent falling in love with NYC, and wonders if there’s any real reason to be anywhere else.

by Conor Horgan

When I arrived to spend the winter of 2011 in New York, people naturally asked me why I was there. I told them I had no compelling reason not to be. I’d gotten lucky—a friend’s sister had a fifth-floor walk up in Little Italy she needed to sublet for a few months. An itinerant writer of my acquaintance had spent enough savagely bleak winters on the West Coast of Ireland to want a cozier bolt hole in Dublin–my place. I had a perfectly portable occupation, writing a screenplay, which I figured I might as well do in New York as anywhere else.

Even though the city reached out to me, I often felt alone. It was a bittersweet, oddly welcoming feeling. It felt right. After a while it dawned on me that is one of the reasons I was there. New York is an excellent place to be lonely.

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