NYPL showcases ‘electrifying’ rare subway photos from 1970s

An image in a new exhibit on the top floor of the New York Public Library’s main branch shows two women sitting in a subway car nearly 50 years ago. They appear exhausted, or deep in thought – as the train tracks loom impossibly close.

The dream-like image was created using a unique darkroom technique. It’s just one of the exhibit’s 42 images, all of which are slightly wider than a photograph shot on 35mm film. They line a long, narrow hallway in the library, which compliments the subject matter.

The photos were all shot in 1977 by Dublin-born photographer Alen MacWeeney. They do more than transport viewers back to graffiti-filled train cars; they create a disorienting atmosphere through his dark room printing method, which seamlessly combines two images into a diptych.

“I wouldn’t go in and take photographs immediately in a subway car because there’s too many people, too much going on,” MacWeeney said in an interview with Gothamist. “I’d have to let things settle. I would prefer to be the one in that car first. And the other people coming in were then my guests, and therefore they were fair game.”

Trains converge in the background. Columns appear too close together. Subway car windows are unusually close. The mashups aren’t obvious at first. But with further examination, the pictures take on new meaning and are arguably stronger as one.

When choosing how to combine images, MacWeeney said, he just went with his gut.

“That’s done entirely emotionally,” he said, speaking from his Upper East Side apartment. “You don’t make the obvious connections. You make the ones that seem to come alive.”

MacWeeney began shooting local news stories for the Irish Times when he was 16 years old. He was obsessed with his mother and sister’s fashion magazines, and reached out to an editor at Vogue in London who told him that if he wanted to work in fashion, he should take a picture of someone famous.

So, MacWeeney managed to photograph…