The Subway Pictures

by Peter Peter

In The Subway Pictures, Peter Peter shares his extraordinary images of life on the move, capturing “ordinary” New Yorkers in a remarkable give-and-take with their public surroundings. As Billy Collins writes in his Foreword, “Each of these images is a visual report from underground, the testimony of an optical Virgil bringing us news of the travelers below, momentarily stopped figures in the nonstop shuttling that goes on beneath the concrete skin of the city.”
In the wake of September 11, Peter found the heart of New York City in the subterranean world through which he rode nearly every day for the next three years. “It was like being carried along on a river of whispering signs and symbols,” he writes. “Travelers suspended in contemplation by the steady rhythm of stop-and-go seemed like speechless souls from a different dimension. The scene reshuffled at each stop and every now and then the elements would slip into a visual story.”
In the seventy-seven candid color pictures culled from the thousands Peter snapped with his basic 3 megapixel camera, the magic is everywhere. Whether we are looking at a very tall man crocheting with incredible concentration, someone flamboyantly stretching on the platform, or a Jackie Collins look-alike applying makeup, the world that comes across is vibrantly human and defiantly unself-conscious. Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of the fabled New York City subway system, The Subway Pictures is an unforgettable tribute to the individuality of all those who ride underground in New York, and to every urban American.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2004

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

great photography depicting the period of 2001 to 2002 in NYC

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is simply a photo collection of pictures taken on the New York subway of different subjects in different states of being. There was no real origial work at hand but interesting to see the different ways of life that pass through and ride on the subway on a daily basis. The author trys to add some sense of purpose and meaning to each photo but given that they were taken under secret measures, anyones meaning is just as good.

[Cherie · Rating 2 out of 5]

C+ Scenes of everyday life on the NYC subway; not too many things I could not have seen before, but nice photos the same.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did my voyeuristic tendencies good.