It’s obvious that there is excessive crowds, loud noises, and yes, even conflicting mindsets all over. That sort of comes with the territory of living in a large city. Or at least I thought it was. I’m realizing that this whole reasoning shouldn’t define what we are. We’ve become too complacent in just accepting things as they are because it is “normal” in a city this large.
Within my photo travels, I focus on capturing things the way they are which enables me to look back and realize that it is bad to blindly accept the status quo.
Some places in this city are historical in nature. Looking closely to the architecture of the buildings as well as the layout of the streets and highways as originally planned, even subway tracks, all fall into the realm of infrastructure. They were originally designed the way they were for good reasons and intentions. Some would say our former leaders and populous were geniuses compared to today’s society. I happen to agree in part. I’ve seen atrocious additions and modifications to our local infrastructure which makes things much worse for everybody.
The hard truth of the matter is that this city only grew and thrived on the massive plans and implementation of major highways and thoroughfares. Plans for seemingly logical highways much like the LOMEX which would have connected interstate 78 coming from New Jersey to its child spur of interstate 278 in Brooklyn would easily have avoided the incredible mess in downtown Manhattan on what is now Canal Street.
The Bushwick Expressway would have connected from the Williamsburg Bridge via what is now Conduit Avenue to connect to old spur interstate 878 (now NYS route 878) making a direct route from Manhattan to JFK airport.
I could go on about these once magnificent plans to connect everyone in NYC, but wow, this would be great photography to document to say the least.