There were two people I really wanted to photography Sunday in New York, one was Paddy Malone, who came to New York from Ireland in the 1960’s to work his way up through the ranks of the Carriage Horse trade and turn over his medallion to his son, and the other was Eva Hughes, the vice-president of the New York Horse and Carriage Association. I didn’t have the heart to bother Paddy, he was sitting down in a chair watching his son Steven introduce Liam Neeson and I didn’t want to ask him to get up, although he did get up to meet me and say nice things about my writing.

The other was Eva Hughes, a ferocious but unlikely warrior for the carriage horses. She is a former carriage rider, her life has been spent around carriage horses, she lives in Queens and has devoted her life, day and night, to fighting for the carriage horses and trying to keep them in New York. She says it is time to change the narrative of the carriage  horses, she says enough is enough, it is time for the carriage trade to tell it’s story, and not simply be defined by the stories other people are telling. It is a significant decision, perhaps long overdue, and it has already changed the dynamic of the public discussion around the horses.  Liam Neeson has become the public face of this new story, his is a face people want to see. Everywhere I go, people tell me they thought the horses were being abused, and now it seems the mayor and the animal rights groups are saying it isn’t that the horses are abused, or that the stables are inhumane, it is really that there is too much traffic in New York City for them to handle.

People in New York – several of the reporters present – were telling me that people in New York were awakening to the fact that the things they have been told about the horses are not always true, and people are increasingly wondering if the horses are not being abused, why is the government really trying to ban them from the city?   Liam Neeson says the elephants in the room are the real estate developers who want the land the stables are built on. I think it’s more complex than that, I’ll write more about it later in the week. In the meantime, I am glad I got a portrait of Eva Hughes, I think I came close to capturing this warm and open human being.

I did not capture her ferocity. She says fighting for the horses is now her life’s work, she is in it to the end.