FELLOW TRAVELERS
Like a lot of New Yorkers, I was born elsewhere but drawn here with a hunger for something different. For the first few years I only saw the city from my East Village vantage point, but when I moved to Brooklyn and began commuting daily on the subway, a greater New York opened up for me. Inspired by Walker Evans’s 1930s photos of New York City subway passengers, I began photographing a series called “Fellow Travelers.”
As I tried to capture people’s commutes—whether they were traveling for jobs, school, obligations, or pleasure—I began to see that what might seem to be a series of ordinary or mundane moments had the potential to be more than that. My subjects sometimes gazed at the camera or appeared oblivious; they were going out for revelry or sleeping after a day at work; they were gazing blankly at their phones or talking animatedly to each other—but they did in fact share some bond as fellow travelers.