Photographer Known for Scaling Skyscrapers Arrested at Gallery Opening

During a gallery opening in Manhattan on Thursday evening, the photographer Isaac Wright was handcuffed by four men dressed as police officers, leading many attendees to suspect the arrest was a planned performance—an ironic tribute to Wright’s history of unauthorized building climbs for his photography.

However, the arrest was genuine.

Plainclothes officers from the New York Police Department had been monitoring the Chelsea gallery for several hours before summoning uniformed officers to detain Wright. The police apprehended him following his recent ascent of the Empire State Building, charging him with misdemeanor criminal trespass and placing him in a squad car.

Wright, who is Black, had anticipated that the launch of his first solo gallery exhibition would mark the conclusion of years filled with legal challenges. Beginning in 2018, he climbed numerous well-known structures worldwide as a method of coping with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his military service. His activities had previously led law enforcement to consider him a serious threat—officers once pursued him with weapons drawn, even shutting down miles of interstate highway during an arrest, and filed felony charges that could have resulted in decades of imprisonment.

Those legal disputes have since been settled, and Wright’s artistic career has flourished. On the night of the gallery opening at Robert Mann Gallery, he was dressed in a tuxedo, mingling with an audience that included affluent art collectors alongside urban explorers, when a plainclothes officer directed him to place his hands behind his back.

“I truly thought it was a joke,” Wright, 29, said in an interview after his release from custody. “At least this time they didn’t point a gun at me.”

The charges appear to be linked to a recent climb in which Wright took the tourist elevator to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building before evading security cameras and a locked gate that led to the spire. He then ascended by hand, ultimately reaching the blinking red light at the summit, approximately 1,250 feet above street level.