Photos from NYC subways in the 1980s
As a Midwesterner who didn't get a chance to fall in love with New York City subways until 2002, it's fascinating to take a trip back to the system's not-so-glory days, courtesy a collection of 1980s-era photos on Sean Kernick's 2 4 Flinching blog.
I've seen historical photos of the NYC subways before, but, somehow, the other picture collections seem to skip over this period in the subway's past. What I love best about these images—taken by photographers Bruce Davidson, John F. Conn, Jamel Shabazz and Martha Cooper—is the fact that they are documenting a full world. Sure, on these graffiti-covered and trash-strewn subways, guns got pointed at heads and white yuppies looked terrified. But this was also a system that took little girls to the beach, and suit-wearing men and women to the office.
The photos give you an unflinching sense of what these systems were like at a time when the city had basically left them to rot, but without creating a caricature that distracts from the humanity of the people involved (even the ones who contributed to the rotting). Good stuff.
2 4 Flinching: Subway, lifeblood
Photo taken by Martha Cooper.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
I do the Twitter, the Google+, and (to a much lesser extent) the Facebook.
Books
• Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us
Upcoming Appearances
• April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP.
•April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP.
• April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs
• April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere.
• April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum
• July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
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