Underground Work: Multimedia message

It was born of panic. A realization during a morning commute that I did not have anything to read, and the frightening prospect that I would have to be alone with my thoughts for twenty minutes.

It certainly is not a new idea. People on the subway, and trains, have been fodder for artists since the inception of rail travel. Daumier’s “Third- Class Carriage,” the work of Walker Evans in “Many are Called” and Tom Roma’s pictures on Brooklyn's elevated lines taken in the 1990’s, are a few of the best known. Evans had a cable release strung down his sleeve, attached to a camera hidden in his coat, Roma used a converted canvas bag he could look down into the frame the photograph and my friend Jeff Ladd took the guts out of a small boom box and hid his camera inside. With the advent of the cell phone camera, and the plague of electronic devices on the trains, it all seems much too easy. But, we use the tools we have at hand.

Preston Rescigno

Underground Work

December 27, 2009

Multimedia message

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