In 1946, Stanley Kubrick, then aged only 18, took these photographs of the New York Subway and had them published by LOOK magazine. He photographed for the magazine from 1945 to 1950.
According to Helen O’Brian, head of LOOK’s photographic department, Kubrick generated the highest number of published articles of any photographer she had worked with. At the time, Kubrick was the youngest photographer LOOK had had on its books.
To commemorate the 110th anniversary of the New York subway, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority brought back vintage train cars, giving the public a unique commuting experience.
Two vintage trains were brought back—the “Low-Voltage” train and the “Train of Many Colors”—both of which were used in the 60s until 2001.
(via Flickr)
Subway Art Blog has a wonderful collection of fake, manipulated, and humorous subway signs and posters, curated by Jowy Romano. Some of these are really clever.
There is a 22-foot-long, 200-ton steel monster under Manhattan. Dead, resting deep somewhere under Grand Central Station and Park Avenue, this machine and her twin brother excavated the massive tunnels that you can see here, one of the largest public transportation works of our time.
Here’s an impressive new look at the amazing tunnels and caverns of the East Side Access, an extension of the Long Island Rail Road. Read more
Here’s a link to an animated map that shows the growth of the NYC subway over time, from Appealing Industries Appealing Industries (via Spacing Toronto). Unfortunately there’s no time legend, which would have seemed like a no-brainer to include. Still a very interesting animation, though. And if you want to see about eleventy billion more maps from throughout the history of the NYC subway, go here.
Found on The Map Scroll
I found these originally on Flavorwire and fell in love with Bruce Davidson‘s collection of photos of NYC Subway photos from the 1980s. They remind me of the gritty, realistic eyes of Melissa Weimer’s Lake. Sky. Vans and Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe‘s latest Anthology: Faces, Places, Spaces. Here’s an excerpt from the original article:
Children hovering by the subway window to the glow of Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel. A man cowering from a pointed gun. A young vandal at work in a tagged subway car. A punk brooding at a station. In the mid-80s, photographer Bruce Davidson captured New York City’s subway commuters in a ground-breaking series first published by Aperture, freezing the subject in powerful, split-second vignettes.
The Illinois-born photographer has described his subjects as “the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.” Decades later, the images seem familiar yet distant, cinematic yet tangible. See flash-frightened women in furs and vigilante crime patrollers in our gallery and look for the third edition of Subway available soon from Aperture.
In April 2005, I sent an email to the NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (or MTA) with a suggestion for helping them be more green.
You may or may not know that the MTA has 5,800 subway cars that run on 656 miles of track through 68 bridges, 14 tunnels and four boroughs, and carry 4.7 million people (1.7 percent of the US population) each weekday though 468 stations. You also may not know that the MTA, like most of NYC, runs off of electric power generated by oil-heated, steam-powered generators. So while the impression is that the MTA is green (because it’s not diesel-powered), it still consumes oodles of fossil fuel each day.
This is what prompted me to write them back in 2005, and to resend my letter on the four-year anniversary of it’s lack of a response. Read more