Dispatch: Midtown Commute (2012-2014)

By 2011, I had been in NYC for a few years, mostly freelancing and living off savings. I was on the verge of calling it an extended vacation and moving back to Minnesota when I landed an interview at B&H Photo for a social media manager role. I had given a talk at the B&H Event Center about some of my blogging, and that got me in the door. I got the job, which meant commuting daily from Queens to 34th Street, where the B&H corporate offices were located.

This was the heart of Midtown. For the first time, I was among the masses of workers rushing from the subway to their desk jobs in the Midtown towers. It also made me feel like I was walking through a Winogrand or Meyerowitz photograph. I had learned about street photography through a few pals I’d met on Flickr, who introduced me to the iN-Public collective. I was particularly interested in the work of Blake Andrews, Matt Stuart and Gus Powell, whose book The Company of Strangers is a direct influence on Midtown Commute.

Working in public spaces inevitably includes the people moving through them, so my approach had always involved some degree of candid photography. But there was a certain tension, because photographing people up close was not something I felt comfortable with or wanted to do.

Walking through Midtown felt different. It was visually energizing, and I loved flying through the crowds with a small point-and-shoot, making snapshots spontaneously whenever a scene emerged in front of me. The bulk of the photographs were made over several months spread across two years. I photographed on my way into work and again when I left for the day, drifting up and down the streets but mostly staying around 34th Street and up Fifth Avenue to 42nd Street.

For years, I sat on this project because my feelings about candid photography had shifted. My work evolved to focus on infrastructure and the geography of public spaces. When people appeared in those photographs, they were usually lost in the larger landscape, not up close.

There are ethical debates to consider with this type of photography, but I have arrived at the position that public spaces are for the public, and that respecting and preserving them includes protecting our right to observe what happens there. That said, there are certainly street photographers who, I believe, cross boundaries in the pursuit of making photographs.

It's definitely a line that every photographer working candidly in public spaces need to determine. My goal is to be open, but unobtrusive and certainly not aggressive or confrontational, which is where I think street photography goes off the rails too often.

I feel this body of work sits nicely alongside my other books within my larger NYC Public Strata project, especially the transit-oriented Around the 7 Train and my book about the LIRR, ...to the end of paradise island. My photography spans different styles and approaches; photographing strangers in public was simply the method I chose for this project.

Now that it’s been over a decade, I also feel that the curve of photographic interestingness changes how I see these photographs. It was certainly a different time, though I’m not sure you can tell directly from the photographs, which might say something about our monoculture, where styles, trends and behaviors are constantly recycled.

One thing, I think, remains the same: commuters and workers are still moving in masses to jobs in Midtown Manhattan. It’s one of the few places in America with a truly dense pedestrian experience. Looking back, I’m glad I got to experience it myself, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of people with their own motivations and stories. It was an honor to cross paths with them.

View all the spreads on the book page.

I’m a photographer based in Minneapolis working on long-duration projects centered on walking, cities, and public space. This newsletter shares periodic dispatches from that work, along with selected images and related references. Selected work also appears on Instagram.