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Subway Series
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New York City is perhaps the most diverse city in the world, and the subway system is how its population gets around -- to and from work, home, school, meetings, nightlife, recreation, doctor appointments, court appearances, etc. New Yorkers use the subway to go everywhere within the five boroughs; it is a shared, integral part of their collective lives. It is a common place, politically neutral, physically safe and relatively efficient.
Many passengers travel alone and retreat into their own private psychic spaces, entering into a transit state of consciousness. Whether asleep, absorbed under headphones, reading the paper, magazine, book or script, or just gazing into nothingness, they remain joined in purpose, separate but equal -- enveloped and buffered by the train and its noise.
Transit time is a time to be alone with one's thoughts and feelings - and New Yorkers have had a lot to think about lately. Since 9/11, the collective thoughts of these commuters have taken on a grim commonality. I share in these thoughts and fears. It can be read in our eyes and deciphered from our body language.
I began photographing in the subway in March of 2002, looking for expressions of this fragile bond of humanity. I felt this was the right place to be looking for the heart and soul of the city. With its contained, minimal environment, limited color pallet and infinitely varied subjects I had all the elements I needed for my canvas.
TECHNICAL: These images were made with a medium resolution digital camera, using its gimble-mounted monitor for indirect viewing. Much of the image information lies beneath the digital noise threshold, so that shapes emerge out of a sea of arbitrary visual artifacts. Rather than being abstract, the images are merely imprecise - capturing the underlying atmosphere and tension in the train.
EXHIBITIONS: Forty prints from this body of work were first presented in a solo exhibition entitled "New York El Metro" at the Centro de Investigaciones Etnológicas, Granada, Spain. The show coincided with a conference of anthropologists, and was accompanied by a catalog that included twenty images from the series.
UPDATE: After the start of the war in Iraq, the nature of shared purpose changed and was replaced by government sponsored paranoia, typified by such campaigns as, "Si tu ve algo; dice algo." It became more and more difficult to photograph in the subway and I eventually stopped altogether.
Many passengers travel alone and retreat into their own private psychic spaces, entering into a transit state of consciousness. Whether asleep, absorbed under headphones, reading the paper, magazine, book or script, or just gazing into nothingness, they remain joined in purpose, separate but equal -- enveloped and buffered by the train and its noise.
Transit time is a time to be alone with one's thoughts and feelings - and New Yorkers have had a lot to think about lately. Since 9/11, the collective thoughts of these commuters have taken on a grim commonality. I share in these thoughts and fears. It can be read in our eyes and deciphered from our body language.
I began photographing in the subway in March of 2002, looking for expressions of this fragile bond of humanity. I felt this was the right place to be looking for the heart and soul of the city. With its contained, minimal environment, limited color pallet and infinitely varied subjects I had all the elements I needed for my canvas.
TECHNICAL: These images were made with a medium resolution digital camera, using its gimble-mounted monitor for indirect viewing. Much of the image information lies beneath the digital noise threshold, so that shapes emerge out of a sea of arbitrary visual artifacts. Rather than being abstract, the images are merely imprecise - capturing the underlying atmosphere and tension in the train.
EXHIBITIONS: Forty prints from this body of work were first presented in a solo exhibition entitled "New York El Metro" at the Centro de Investigaciones Etnológicas, Granada, Spain. The show coincided with a conference of anthropologists, and was accompanied by a catalog that included twenty images from the series.
UPDATE: After the start of the war in Iraq, the nature of shared purpose changed and was replaced by government sponsored paranoia, typified by such campaigns as, "Si tu ve algo; dice algo." It became more and more difficult to photograph in the subway and I eventually stopped altogether.