Last Stop: An Exploration of the Neighborhoods at the Ends of the Subway Lines in New York City

IG: Since 1977, when you arrived in New York City, your work has focused on different aspects and areas of the city, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s to the World Trade Center before and after 9/11, to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the COVID-19 pandemic. What was the impetus for your most recent project, which explores the city through the last stops of the subway lines?

BR: I have been posting many of my early New York photos on social media, on my own accounts, but also on several thematic Facebook groups, especially one called “Manhattan before 1990.” There are tens of thousands of members, and my pictures of the Lower East Side from 1980 get an enormous response.

The pictures provoke a lot of discussion about the changes to the city over the years, and while some of it is edifying, much of the talk becomes mired in nostalgia and sentimentality. 1980 was, indeed, a unique and fascinating moment in NYC history, especially as centered on Lower Manhattan’s music and art scene. I was part of it—certainly—but to a great extent, as a photographer, I stood back and recorded what I saw. Like all such moments of creative flowering, it was ephemeral, and in the case of the Lower East Side, that moment began to decay amid unabating crime and the rapidly accelerating AIDS epidemic.

Nevertheless, when I post pictures of 1980 New York, inevitably, someone will assert that the present city is dead, that it is no longer authentic or real. There is a certain bitterness people exhibit that I have trouble understanding, though perhaps some of it is just an expression of lost youth. And then there are younger people who seem oddly nostalgic for something they missed, that somehow the present doesn’t have the same presence as the past. My response to that is, open your eyes!

New York City is not dead, let’s be clear. There are a million more people living here than there were in 1980, and they are not just statistics. My college-age son is one of them. He grew up in the city and has taken ownership of it, just as I did when I first arrived. I began trying to see the city through his eyes—at least as best I could—realizing, of course, that I bring a lot of personal history to the table.

Ultimately, Last Stop came out of a desire to move beyond nostalgia and try to see the city as it is now, a once again bustling metropolis emerging from the stasis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

IG: Several of the neighborhoods you portray in the book have changed since the subway lines were built, in some cases from farmland or places to retreat from the city to now dense residential and commercial areas. What are some of the most extreme changes that stood out to you?

BR: One of the noteworthy things about the NYC subway system is that it radiates out from Manhattan, and as the system expanded, the new lines did not usually extend to already existing population centers. Some led to small villages, others to undeveloped farmland, or even to beaches. The expansion of the system was obviously all about real estate. Coney Island and Brighton Beach were originally resort destinations, but gradually became places where people live year-round. Places like Jamaica and Flushing in Queens were for a time dominated by single-family houses but are now bustling mixed-use communities with high-rises and major shopping corridors. The biggest changes in recent years have been the result of upzoning designed to encourage greater density, and there are discussions about repurposing a freight rail line that would link together the subway lines in Brooklyn and Queens.

IG: In your photographs of the Broad Channel, Rockaway Beach, and Howard Beach we see areas of New York City that someone less familiar with the city might not expect. Do you think these areas will dramatically change in the next few decades due to economic pressures or environmental threats, such as their vulnerability to storms and rising sea levels?

BR: It is amazing that in this huge densely populated city that there are enclaves like Broad Channel and Howard Beach that resemble New England fishing villages. These are close-knit communities, mostly white and conservative, middle-class people who live a little off the grid, so to speak. The roar of jets taking off and landing at JFK is a constant reminder of the outside world: so close, yet so far. Thousands of travelers pass through the Howard Beach station every day, though rarely does anyone go down to the street. These communities, built on the wetlands of Jamaica Bay, are living on borrowed time. They have been from the beginning but with the accelerating pace of climate change, I give them, maybe, a couple of decades.

IG: In many of your photographs, you document the people and the activity around these stops while in other photos there is a palpable stillness. Can you talk about the coexistence of these two conditions in New York City and how you experience it?

BR: I have always appreciated the fact that in a city as busy as New York, one can still find moments of calm and places of retreat. The last stop of the 1 train takes you Riverdale in the Bronx with a vast park of woodlands and hiking trails. Washington Heights, where the C train ends in Upper Manhattan, is a densely populated part of the city, home to a giant hospital complex and a colorful Dominican immigrant community. But as you walk east you reach Coogan’s Bluff, a high rocky escarpment overlooking housing projects built on the location of the old Polo Grounds where Willie Mays made his famous catch in the 1954 World Series. There is a park here and the streets come to an end. One of them, Sylvan Terrace, a row of early-nineteenth century townhouses is only a block long with no parking and no through traffic. It is stunningly quiet. Unbelievably, the entrance to the C train is just a few steps away.

Of course, solitude can be hard to find much of the time, and one can also experience loneliness in the midst of the crowd. My experience, however, is that one often feels empowered as an individual navigating a city that to an outsider might appear overwhelming and chaotic. In the book I write about meeting someone at the famous clock in Grand Central—before the days of cell phones—but running late, called the station master’s number and had my friend paged, and my message relayed. I write: “Here in the heart of the metropolis, at the nexus of a vast web of trains, in the swirling crowds and the blur of anonymity, you realize that it all revolves around you, one individual out of millions. That sense of identity is the secret of every New Yorker.”

IG: In the book, you share some curiosities, such as the slabs of stone standing amidst the trees in a wooden area of Riverdale and that were placed there in 1905 to test the durability of various samples of granite to be used on Grand Central Terminal. Did you come across other surprises during your trips that stood out to you?

BR: The weirdest encounter was at a location I actually sought out. I knew that Donald Trump’s boyhood home was in Jamaica Estates, Queens, not far from the end of the F train. I walked past a large Catholic church with a Virgin Mary statue out front and easily found the Trump house sitting abandoned in a weed-choked yard on a street of otherwise neatly maintained Tudor-style homes. A sign in the yard read: “Do not take kittens from this property.” And, indeed, a calico cat with piercing green eyes sat alongside a large mailbox with its red flag up immediately next to the front door. I took several pictures and then walked on through the neighborhood. Several blocks from the Trump house, the cat popped up in front of me, and I realized that it had followed me the whole way.

IG: Almost all the photographs included in the book are taken during daylight. Can you talk about that decision and how the areas you have photographed might differ in their character during nighttime?

BR: No doubt these end of the line neighborhoods are different after dark, and, perhaps, I should have done more evening shots. I was quite attentive to the time of day and direction of light that I felt would work best for each neighborhood I photographed. I did, of course, shoot Times Square after sundown, and I got a really great evening shot of the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island.

IG: While the book focuses on the built environment around the last stops of the subway lines, I am also curious to hear about the communities you encountered along the way, and the differences you found between the lines.

BR: My goal in doing this project was to create a portrait of the whole city in a relatively short period of time. A key working thesis was that the city had become more dispersed, less Manhattan-centric. So, how do you describe that? I came up with the idea of shooting the ends of the lines because it was consistent with viewing the city as multi-centered. Some of the lines began and ended in Manhattan, but most passed through Manhattan and ended in far flung parts of the so-called outer boroughs.

I realized that I was missing lots of neighborhoods along the way. The 7 line, for instance, runs from Hudson Yards in Manhattan to Flushing in Queens. Both ends are really interesting: Hudson Yards being the newest and flashiest part of Manhattan, and Flushing being one of the most vibrant satellite communities in the city. In between are some of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the city. You could easily do a project focused just on the 7 line.

However, as diverse as New York City is overall, it is a crazy quilt, not a melting pot. Each subway line passes through many different neighborhoods, each with distinct identities and histories. By documenting the ends of the lines—about 44 neighborhoods—I felt that I could create a snapshot of the whole megillah. Rather than a linear approach to subway lines, I went for a galaxy of end points.

IG: You could have driven to the last stops of the subway to do this project, but you decided to ride the subway. I sense that there is a larger commitment to the idea of public transportation and the subway beyond a photographic interest. If that is the case, can you talk about that?

BR: Yes, I was absolutely committed to the idea of riding the subway and then walking around. I don’t own a car, but my immediate neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is full of Zipcars, which I could have easily made use of. Although New York has lots of cars—way too many cars—it is a city held together by the web of the subway system. That’s the new New York that I wanted to document, and it seemed necessary to do it by train.

IG: Your work is as much about the built environment it portrays as it is about the communities that occupy them. It provides a snapshot of a city at a particular time. Sharing a similar political context with your book Atlantic City, this book focuses on specific places while dealing with larger topics affecting cities across the United States, such as immigration and diversity. What are some of the takeaways from this unique exploration of NYC?

BR: Before going into photography, I was in the architecture school at the University of Virginia studying city planning. I was passionate about the urban environment, and that did not change even when I shifted to photography. My book Atlantic City was both an indictment of Trump and an exposé of urban dystopia. I used the city as a metaphor for everything gone amiss in American culture. At the same time, I found the place fascinating: a crazy town, tragic, magnetic, amazing.

New York City, the greatest city in the US, is under attack. It is my city, and the only weapon I have is my camera. I believe that New York has thrived in recent decades because of its diversity and cultural elasticity. It is not frozen in time. It is progressive, not in the political sense exactly, but in the supposition that civilization can move forward despite differences among people. It’s in the DNA of this place, maybe going all the way back to the Dutch settlers. That supposition is now being challenged. But the citizens of this city do not passively abide kings or wannabe kings. It should be remembered that New Yorkers pulled down the statue of King George III in 1776.

SUPPORT THE BOOK

Last Stop will be published later this year by Circa. A Kickstarter campaign will be launched in the coming weeks to support the publication of the book.