Walking on the subway walls
Not your everyday commute.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1988-1990
Between 1988 and 1990, photographer Steven Siegel and his friends made regular visits to a junkyard in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the water from the Statue of Liberty. This junkyard was filled with derelict and haphazardly piled MTA subway cars, drenched in colorful graffiti, some of the last vestiges of a bygone era for the city. In the mid-'80s, the MTA had gone to war against graffiti, upgrading the act from a nuisance to a crime, and instituting a policy where any car tagged with spray paint was immediately taken out of service and cleaned. The city officially declared victory over train graffiti on May 12, 1989.The junkyard was neither fenced in nor guarded, allowing Siegel and his friends to explore at their leisure, climbing and playing on the retired cars and making surreal photos. Unfortunately for photographers interested in post-apocalyptic settings, the junkyard is no longer used by the MTA. Subway cars are now often dumped offshore to form artificial reefs.For more historical images of New York City, visit Siegel's Flickr page.
