Being There

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.