Construction of the New York Subway 1909

Curator: Oh, the blues in this image just get right into your bones, don't they? Editor: Indeed. Before us is a cyanotype print entitled *Construction of the New York Subway*, created in 1909. We see what appears to be an elevated train track under which is a single figure. Curator: Makes you wonder what it must have felt like, seeing this city bloom right before your eyes. You can almost smell the dust and ozone! Editor: It's a rather compelling composition, certainly. Observe how the photographer employs the architectural structure as a kind of framing device. The repetition of beams and supports creates a complex geometric pattern that directs the viewer's eye through the image. The high contrast is certainly notable. Curator: I imagine that this worker standing below it is probably experiencing a really complicated cocktail of feelings. Like awe, and pride, but also just pure anxiety. Change is hard, even when it comes on the back of something great. Editor: It's intriguing that you say that. Semiotically, the very blueness of the cyanotype could be read as suggestive of melancholy, as well as clarity. It mutes detail and almost renders the city as this kind of utopian dream that may feel rather detached. This figure introduces the scale in the frame; are we looking at the promise of progress, or its heavy shadow? Curator: Exactly! A perfect metaphor for where we often find ourselves as humans. Striving towards something bigger but wrestling to find ourselves at the foundations of these modern behemoths. Maybe this person's wondering if he's more titan, or ant? Editor: Grant W. Pullis truly presents us with a thought-provoking synthesis of modernity and its possible discontents. His focus is particularly incisive when we recall this as an exemplar of pictorialism's concern to raise the status of photography into something considered artistic. Curator: Which feels funny now, right? It is easy to be dismissive with time but the world never just stops changing; so photographs remain ever-precious reminders about both how quickly everything around us is evolving but how resilient we can each learn to become, simultaneously. Editor: Very well said, that combination of personal fortitude alongside municipal changes. A lot to take away.