Riddhi Mishra
P013 → Good Morning New Yorkers
I moved to New York for school, but I didn’t realize that my education would come courtesy of the A train, the G train, and the occasional psychotic rat. When you move to New York, you quickly learn that the subway is less of a commute and more of an ongoing performance art piece, starring people you’ll never see again. It’s a place where everyone’s trying to get somewhere, but the real journey is in the 3-minute encounters and the people-watching Olympics.
For the last few years, I’ve collected faces—strangers, commuters, wanderers—people who are just as much a part of this city’s fabric as the graffiti on the subway walls. They’ve got stories, but they’re too busy trying to avoid eye contact to tell them. So I started drawing them. Quick sketches, raw moments—capturing the stuff that only happens in transit, where people are too tired to pretend they’re not interesting.
This project is just as much about what’s left unsaid as what’s in plain sight. It’s weirdly beautiful—and like New York itself, it never quite
stays still.
Hop on, the train’s leaving.