From the Train
Taking the train from Washington DC to New York City, and sometimes locations further north, is a trip that I always enjoy taking. Known as the Northeast Corridor, this stretch of railway perfectly combines my love of trains and my fascination with the urban landscape.
Cities were originally built up around trains. Subsequently, with the promotion of large scale automobile transit in the mid-twentieth century, urban renewal and modernization became heavily influenced by highway placement, with passenger rail becoming largely unseen and relegated to what became the backyards of cities. This was coincident with the inexorable decline of the industrial economy in cities along the northeast and elsewhere.
The remnants of this can be seen in the now empty and decaying, former working class neighborhoods of Baltimore, and the empty shells of factories and warehouses in Delaware and New Jersey. What remains functional is often bleak hardscapes emphasized by crumbling infrastructure and gritty industrial yards.
The photographs that I took during some of my trips was an evolution of seeing. Ultimately, I settled on what represents a more abstract view of the passing landscape that gives one a sense of transience while suggesting
a hollowing out, over time, of a once vibrant place.
