For about a week, I’ve been work­ing my way through the video archives of the Inter­na­tional Centre for Pho­to­graphy. They have a series of recor­ded artist talks that are simple but very well done. I was really taken by Jeff Liao, a young pho­to­grapher in New York. His “Hab­itat 7″ pho­tos are a series of high res­ol­u­tion (wall-sized) pan­or­a­mas taken of, from, or about the num­ber 7 sub­way line from Queens to Times Square. Liao uses the com­muter train-line as a lovely meta­phor. He likens it’s course to that of a river val­ley, along which can be found the myriad of com­munit­ies that make up the liv­ing city. He puts it bet­ter than I ever could:

Like river val­leys that flowed through and gave birth to early civil­iz­a­tions, the IRT 7 train of the New York City sub­way sys­tem serves as the con­duit that con­nects many eth­nic­ally diverse neigh­bor­hoods in north­w­est Queens to the heart of Man­hat­tan. While I’ve been liv­ing along the “Inter­na­tional Express” for years, I am still con­stantly awed by the com­plex­ity of the com­munit­ies formed along­side it as well as the har­mony so many people of dis­tinct eth­nic back­grounds are able to live in. I’ve come to see the 7 train as a “hab­itat” of these immig­rant set­tlers who pur­sue the typ­ical “Amer­ican Dream” way of life while uphold­ing their eth­nic traditions.

from http://www.jeffliao.com

I’m head­ing to New York for a visit next week. I’m look­ing for­ward to rid­ing the sub­way, with Liao’s beau­ti­ful pho­tos tucked in the back of my mind. I’d really like to see these pic­tures in per­son. The inter­net just doesn’t seem to do them justice.

I’ve always loved rid­ing the metro. The train is a great place to sit and to think. Of all of the great moments of clar­ity in my life, three have been on the sub­way. In 2005, on my way to Coney Island in the late after­noon, I watched a butch lat­ina and her femme girl­friend talk and smile. The intox­ic­at­ing pace of the crazy big city star­ted to sink in, and I knew I was hooked on cit­ies. A few years later on a gray New Year’s in Paris, on my way to pick up bar­be­cue pork, I real­ized that I was actu­ally enjoy­ing trav­el­ing alone. A few days later in the tube in Lon­don I had the start­ling sen­sa­tion of being at home in a com­pletely new place. I love the train as a way to under­stand the urban social and archi­tec­tural envir­on­ment.

We just don’t do sub­ways right in Canada. We don’t do tran­scend­ent sub­ways . You might think we would, what with the blis­ter­ing win­ters we endure. And really we should build bet­ter sub­ways, but Cana­dians live in car com­muter cit­ies. We’re not even close to being eco­lo­gic­ally friendly, let alone mul­ti­cul­tural in our approach to pub­lic transit (although that point is debat­able for all colo­nial cit­ies, of which I include Amer­ican ones). It’s a shame to live in a coun­try with an abund­ance of real rivers but so few social water­ways.