Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Collars, Captured by Camera

Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at an exhibition of photographs of the collars that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore. We’ll also look at a Manhattan Democrat whose City Hall hopes were dashed in 2021 but who is now looking into challenging Mayor Eric Adams in 2025.

In the soft stillness of a museum gallery, you could forget that the photographs on the walls around you were shot under time pressure.

Six minutes each, the photographer Elinor Carucci told me.

The photographs, on view at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, are haunting, almost three-dimensional images of collars and necklaces that belonged to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court.

They stamped her personality in the public consciousness, making her recognizable beyond the court, so much so that the first poster for the film “RBG” showed nothing but a collar with the title.

But Ginsburg’s collars were not just about a look. They conveyed meaning — without words — in a way that fashion accessories usually don’t.

Ginsburg had a “majority” collar that she wore when delivering opinions that became the law of the land.

She also had a “dissent” collar for when the vote among the justices had not gone her way. She wore that collar on the day after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — when no decisions were announced by the court.

And there was a “court” collar that she wore during her final term on the bench — and while lying in state after her death in September 2020.

Carucci was stunned when she learned that Ginsburg had died. In “The Collars of RBG: A Portrait of Justice,” a book written with Sara Bader and published last year, Carucci wrote that the news came when she was at an aunt’s house in Kew Gardens, Queens, and that her teenage daughter “cried on the F train all the way from Queens” home to Manhattan.

Carucci wrote that the assignment by Time magazine to photograph the collars had called for “still-life photography, not my specialty.” She told me she was most comfortable photographing people — “people crying, people fighting.”

But she could not turn down an assignment that she called “the equivalent of documenting a superhero’s costume.” So she began preparing for the shoot in Washington, with her husband, Eran Bendheim, accompanying her.

Based on the time allotted by the Supreme Court, “we knew we would have six minutes per collar,” she told me. “By the time you take the collar out, it’s not a lot.” She took test shots with a collar she made from a paper towel, figuring it would be about the same color as the white collars in Ginsburg’s collection.

Then she and her husband went to the Supreme Court. They were checked by guards and sniffed by security dogs. So was her camera equipment. “That is very different from photo shoots I am used to,” she said.

Once they set up her strobes and the cabinet containing the collars was wheeled in, one collar almost stopped her.

It was embroidered with a quote from Ginsburg’s husband, Martin: “It’s not sacrifice, it’s family.” (Martin Ginsburg had moved to the capital when she became a federal judge in 1980, leaving behind his career as a well-connected lawyer and law school professor in New York.) His quote came 13 years later, when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, and was preceded by: “I have been supportive of my wife since the beginning of time, and she has been supportive of me.” That part of the quote did not make it onto the collar.

“I started to cry,” Carucci said. “My husband was like, ‘Get hold of yourself. Stop crying. We have four minutes left and you’re crying. Four minutes. No crying.’”

She said that the collar was commissioned for the justice’s 85th birthday and was made by the New York fashion house M.M. LaFleur. “I think they went twice to the Supreme Court for fittings,” she said. “It’s complex and has many layers, and then on the back there’s the quote when they asked him about moving from New York to Washington. He was talking about doing things for one another. That was where I cried. It had so much meaning.”

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The latest Metro news

Scott Stringer, a former New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate in 2021, is gearing up to try to beat Eric Adams in 2025.

Stringer became the first Democrat to announce a move toward challenging Adams, saying that he was forming an exploratory committee and that he was raising money for a possible primary run next year.

History is not on Stringer’s side: No challenger has beaten an incumbent mayor in a primary since David Dinkins defeated Edward Koch in 1989.

But as our colleague Nicholas Fandos points out, few of Adams’s predecessors have had such low poll numbers. His approval rating stood at just 28 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll last month, the lowest for any New York City mayor since Quinnipiac began surveying the city in 1996. Adams is also facing budget uncertainty amid the city’s migrant crisis, and the F.B.I. is conducting a broad criminal investigation into whether his 2021 campaign accepted illegal donations.

“Let’s be blunt: Stuff ain’t getting done,” Stringer said, alluding to the mayor’s “get stuff done” mantra. “I know how to lead. I know how to manage. And I know the finances of the city like the back of my hand.”

Stringer, who was comptroller from 2014 to 2021 after two terms as the Manhattan borough president, will have to contend with his own baggage. His bid for mayor in 2021 imploded after a longtime associate accused him of groping her and pressuring her to have sex when he was running for public advocate in the early 2000s.

Stringer denied wrongdoing and later sued the woman, Jean Kim, for defamation. He received just 5 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary in 2021 and has not held office since.

Adams has amassed significant campaign contributions and has the backing of powerful labor unions, along with support from African Americans who want the city’s second Black mayor elected to a second term.

Dear Diary:

A cab picked me up near Bryant Park on one of my last days in the city. As we turned onto Park Avenue, I had a sense of déjà vu.

“Is there a building near here that you can drive through?” I asked the cabby.

“Yeah!” he said. “Right behind us.”

“Maybe called the Pan Am Building?”

“It’s MetLife now,” he said.

I told him that when I was a girl, my father would ask taxi drivers to drive through the building whenever we were nearby. After my parents’ divorce, I explained, I would visit my father in Manhattan on weekends, and he was always looking for ways to amuse me.

“You want to go through it?” the cabby asked.

“How long will it take?”

“Two minutes!”

He pulled a U-turn and cruised into the building with the golden clock on the facade. The ride thrilled me no less than it had when I was an 8-year-old, 56 years before.

“You made my day,” I said as he dropped me off on the Upper West Side. “By the way, how long will it take to get to J.F.K. on Sunday?”

“I’m working Sunday!” he said. “You need a ride, here’s my number.”

— Gigi Rosenberg

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.