The New York City Subway is a classroom. One in which we are at once teachers and students. It has written rules (do not encourage panhandling; keep away from the edge of the track; no graffiti, stand for the elderly), and unspoken ones (get where you need to go; keep you head down; guard your belongings; don’t make eye contact). The New York City subway is not only a vehicle for transit, but for transition. Inside the train cars we become a public—the watchers and the watched—silently performing the rules of the subway for one another so that we might learn how to be. photographing people on the subway is both an attempt to capture the rules and archetypes of the subway in action and also a way of challenging them.
About the presenterAaron Michael Breetwor
Aaron Breetwor is a photographer based in San Francisco and New York.