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Chasing the Darkness
http://www.6sqft.com/photo-series-c...bway-cars-being-dumped-in-the-atlantic-ocean/
Photo Series Captures Three Years of NYC Subway Cars Being Dumped in the Atlantic Ocean
POSTED ON TUE, JANUARY 20, 2015BY DANA SCHULZIN ART, TRANSPORTATION
Who knew that the graveyard for decommissioned NYC subway cars was at the bottom of the ocean? If this is news to you, then you don’t want to miss this photo series by Stephen Mallon, who documented the train cars being dumped into the Atlantic from Delaware to South Carolina over three years. But before you call 311 about this seeming act of pollution, let us tell you that it’s actually an environmental effort to create artificial reef habitats for fostering sea life along the eastern seabed, which was started over ten years ago.
Mallon considers himself an “industrial photographer,” shooting subjects like abandoned ships, plane crash wreckage, and power plants. His photo series is called Next Stop, Atlantic and showcases stacks of subways cars on barges, action shots of the trains being tossed into the ocean, and strangely beautiful images of the subways floating in the ocean. It’s quite surreal, as the trains are stripped of their windows, doors, seats and steel wheels.
An article in Brooklyn Rail notices the two most striking features of the photos– “there are no people in the images, and the subway cars retain their old working insignias.” The lack of humans furthers the sense of abandonment, while the logos give each car its own identity.
The environmental effort is based on the fact that marine organisms attach themselves to hard surfaces–like the metal frames of the train cars–serving as food for other sea creatures and creating an overall healthier habitat. Since the MTA began the initiative, close to 3,000 cars have made their way into the ocean.
Photos from the series will be on view at NYU’s Kimmel Galleries from February 6th through March 15th as part of the exhibition Patterns of Interest.
These would also make cool little homes. I saw an article on the abandoned rail line in Paris (la petite ceinture) where some of the old train cars where converted into homes...pretty neat.
EXERPT
And then I arrived at the mystery that has been intriguing for the last few years. These railways cars have been sitting on this line all that time, and on top of that, I have seen that they have electricity and that people are living in them. Even though I had walked through an open gate opened an unlocked gate to get these photos, I was unwilling to go any farther while alone and without any knowledge of a possible alternate escape route
So I went back out on the boulevard.
However, I took this as an official invitation to investigate more thoroughly.
I zoomed in on a window to see that there were even official opening hours.
A man quickly came out to take his drying jeans off the fence (to keep me from stealing them, I suppose, if I were so inclined). He seemed mute and a bit fearful. Then another man came out, looking just a tiny bit official. We greeted each other and I told him that I had long been wondering what on earth this set of rail cars was. "It is an emergency accommodation centre," he said. "And it also serves for rehabilitation of the disenfranchised."
Actually the French word that is used for rehabilitation is reinsertion and the person I was talking to had clearly not been reinserted for very long.
"So it's an official place?" I asked.
"Yes, it's official. We have all the necessary authorisations." He sounded defensive as though he expected me to say that I thought it was disgraceful and I was going to contact the authorities to get them evicted. He said "it's run by a private association with unpaid volunteers," in case I questioned the use of my municipal taxes.
"I think it's great," I said, to reassure him.
"Have a nice afternoon," he said. Frankly, this place is one of the most completely isolated spots that you can find inside the city limits of Paris. It is totally hemmed in by the rail lines of Gare de Lyon and the right bank expressway which turns into the A4 autoroute as it crosses the city limits. And everything else is a mostly abandoned industrial zone, with a few things like the Lafarge cement factory still there. I don't think anybody lives with 500 metres of the place. And that of course shows the same disgraceful NIMBY attitude concerning these places just about anywhere in the Western world. How can people be "reinserted" in such complete isolation?
Well, I wasn't going to solve that problem today, so I continued my trek, after taking one last photo of the site. The graffiti-covered wagons have been recently whitewashed, but I don't expect that it will last very long.
The green fence shows the limit of the rehabilitation zone.
Read more: http://anyportinastorm.proboards.com/thread/6767?page=1#ixzz3PYeOZSzC
Photo Series Captures Three Years of NYC Subway Cars Being Dumped in the Atlantic Ocean
POSTED ON TUE, JANUARY 20, 2015BY DANA SCHULZIN ART, TRANSPORTATION
Who knew that the graveyard for decommissioned NYC subway cars was at the bottom of the ocean? If this is news to you, then you don’t want to miss this photo series by Stephen Mallon, who documented the train cars being dumped into the Atlantic from Delaware to South Carolina over three years. But before you call 311 about this seeming act of pollution, let us tell you that it’s actually an environmental effort to create artificial reef habitats for fostering sea life along the eastern seabed, which was started over ten years ago.
Mallon considers himself an “industrial photographer,” shooting subjects like abandoned ships, plane crash wreckage, and power plants. His photo series is called Next Stop, Atlantic and showcases stacks of subways cars on barges, action shots of the trains being tossed into the ocean, and strangely beautiful images of the subways floating in the ocean. It’s quite surreal, as the trains are stripped of their windows, doors, seats and steel wheels.
An article in Brooklyn Rail notices the two most striking features of the photos– “there are no people in the images, and the subway cars retain their old working insignias.” The lack of humans furthers the sense of abandonment, while the logos give each car its own identity.
The environmental effort is based on the fact that marine organisms attach themselves to hard surfaces–like the metal frames of the train cars–serving as food for other sea creatures and creating an overall healthier habitat. Since the MTA began the initiative, close to 3,000 cars have made their way into the ocean.
Photos from the series will be on view at NYU’s Kimmel Galleries from February 6th through March 15th as part of the exhibition Patterns of Interest.
These would also make cool little homes. I saw an article on the abandoned rail line in Paris (la petite ceinture) where some of the old train cars where converted into homes...pretty neat.
EXERPT
And then I arrived at the mystery that has been intriguing for the last few years. These railways cars have been sitting on this line all that time, and on top of that, I have seen that they have electricity and that people are living in them. Even though I had walked through an open gate opened an unlocked gate to get these photos, I was unwilling to go any farther while alone and without any knowledge of a possible alternate escape route
So I went back out on the boulevard.
However, I took this as an official invitation to investigate more thoroughly.
I zoomed in on a window to see that there were even official opening hours.
A man quickly came out to take his drying jeans off the fence (to keep me from stealing them, I suppose, if I were so inclined). He seemed mute and a bit fearful. Then another man came out, looking just a tiny bit official. We greeted each other and I told him that I had long been wondering what on earth this set of rail cars was. "It is an emergency accommodation centre," he said. "And it also serves for rehabilitation of the disenfranchised."
Actually the French word that is used for rehabilitation is reinsertion and the person I was talking to had clearly not been reinserted for very long.
"So it's an official place?" I asked.
"Yes, it's official. We have all the necessary authorisations." He sounded defensive as though he expected me to say that I thought it was disgraceful and I was going to contact the authorities to get them evicted. He said "it's run by a private association with unpaid volunteers," in case I questioned the use of my municipal taxes.
"I think it's great," I said, to reassure him.
"Have a nice afternoon," he said. Frankly, this place is one of the most completely isolated spots that you can find inside the city limits of Paris. It is totally hemmed in by the rail lines of Gare de Lyon and the right bank expressway which turns into the A4 autoroute as it crosses the city limits. And everything else is a mostly abandoned industrial zone, with a few things like the Lafarge cement factory still there. I don't think anybody lives with 500 metres of the place. And that of course shows the same disgraceful NIMBY attitude concerning these places just about anywhere in the Western world. How can people be "reinserted" in such complete isolation?
Well, I wasn't going to solve that problem today, so I continued my trek, after taking one last photo of the site. The graffiti-covered wagons have been recently whitewashed, but I don't expect that it will last very long.
The green fence shows the limit of the rehabilitation zone.
Read more: http://anyportinastorm.proboards.com/thread/6767?page=1#ixzz3PYeOZSzC
