Photography: 2024 Lunar New Year Parade, Chinatown
This week will be an extremely busy week: I’ll be covering the 2024 New Colossus Festival. Over the course of the next five days and four nights, I’ll be catching an eclectic array of bands across Manhattan’s Lower East Side. So understandably, my posting — both here and on social media — may be a bit sporadic until the festival’s conclusion on Sunday. But in the meantime, there’ll still be a handful of scheduled posts for your enjoyment.
Last month, I went down to Chinatown for the first time in some time, to catch this year’s Lunar New Year Parade celebrating the Year of the Dragon. That Sunday afternoon was cold but unbearable; in fact, in the sun, there’s a subtle hint of Spring.
I got to Mott Street and Canal, showed my press card to the officers holding up the parade with police barriers and was able to weave in and out of the initial group of the parade, taking photos of countless very proud, very happy and extremely beautiful marchers wearing a variety of gorgeous, traditional costumes. As a photographer, it was a delightfully overwhelming blur of color, people and sound.
The officers eventually open up the parade to march down Mott Street towards Chatham Square. I continue weaving through the parade, taking photos and following the parade. It’s raining confetti — from parade watchers on the streets and from fire escapes and roofs. Noise makers are blaring. Drummers and drumming with a propulsive and forceful rhythm. And dragon dragons are weaving through the streets with a drunken lurch.
Parade watchers on both sides of the street are smiling, waving, laughing and taking photos and videos. A few people are FaceTiming or live-streaming, pointing at the parade saying “Look! Look! Look!” I took a picture of one man with a confetti blaster on a fire escape, roughly four stories up. He saw me, waved, then posted and smiled.
Simply put, it was New York at its very best. Photos are below.
