I love many of the carriage drivers I have met, I especially love my good friend Nina Galicheva, a brilliant photographer and designer in New York and a chronicler in images of the carriage trade’s hard and bitter struggle to survive in New York, often against overwhelming odds.

The carriage drivers often talk about their “angels,” people who have appeared out of nowhere to help them in their struggle, people who appeared when things looked the bleakest for them. Nina is one of those angels, her sensitive photographs have captured the carriage trade and the controversy about the horses more poignantly and memorably than anyone has. Whenever we see one another, we both break out into laughter and start taking photos of each other, Nina usually laughs first, we both are fair game, we know it.

“Nina,” said one of the carriage drivers a few month ago, “she is one of our angels, one of the people who appeared almost magically to comfort and inspire us.”

She is coming to visit Bedlam Farm soon, she needs to get some photos of snow for notecards she wants to make, we have plenty of it here already. I love photographing some of the angels that have flocked to the carriage  horses, there are poets, videographers, teenaged bloggers, horse lovers, dog lovers in New Jersey. Nina has inspired me to photograph every one of them.

Nina has great strength and character, she was out of work for a long time this year, and has found work again, but she never stopped venturing forth from her small apartment, working in all  kinds of weather, all kinds of situations, to capture the drama of the New York Carriage Horses, one of the most important issues ever in the animal world in America. I am fond of angels, Nina makes me believe in them.