An old picture

I was recently going through some old boxes of photos from back when I was a student at ICP (which, for those who don't know, stands for either the International Center of Photography or the Insane Clown Posse, depending). I remember taking this picture one morning, trying desperately to finish an assignment at the last minute, on the way to school. Rediscovering this picture brought back the memory of seeing it on the contact sheet for the first time. Which happened about 5 minutes before class that afternoon. Subway photography has always been the best form of practice for me--an exercise in photographing strangers at close range in a confined area, without being able to just walk away afterwards, or disappear in the crowd. Two books of NYC subway photography that I highly recommend checking out are:

Walker Evans' classic work,Many are Called
The Subway Pictures by Peter Peter

There are many others as well. I've heard a lot of people say that it's cliche nowadays to photograph people in the subway--but personally for me, there's no difference between that and above-ground street photography. They both have the potential to be cliche or transcendent, depending on the photographer and the moment.