I took both of the photos on the same day- in fact, they were taken within thirty minutes of one another, each at a stop on my commute to Baruch. In each situation, the words photographed create a rather specific mood, and paint the city in a certain light. The words of the notice in the first photo are written in tone that’s grave, somber, and almost disgustingly matter-of-fact. The city that one pictures while reading them is a bleak, heartless one, where people can never truly let their guard down, and where it appears that every man is out for himself. The faded, colourful words of the second photo show a softer, caring side of the population that rides the city’s subways and boards its buses. If people like the writer of those chalky words do, indeed, dwell here, then perhaps we’re all a bit more cared for and looked-after than we expect.
The headlines we see in newspapers and in articles online make it easy for us to endlessly swap the light in which we see our city. From the time we pass a news kiosk in the morning to the time we scroll through Twitter in the evening, we may have bounced a thousand times between viewing New York City as either a moral cesspool or as a big caring community. In the same way that philosophers have spent centuries debating whether humans nature is innately good or evil, we can spend our lives chasing the most recent headlines alerting us of horrifying or heartwarming events, in hopes that we’ll come to a conclusive image of the moral character of New York. And yet, the truth seems to be that the character of our city is, well, messy – much like the tracks of the subway system both of the notices pictured were found within. NYC will continue to be a setting for both killings and kindness, and the MTA will alternate between telling us to keep our belongings in sight and all times, and reminding us that courtesy is contagious. Just like New York City’s sidewalks, buildings, streets, and (somehow,) cinematic blockbusters, I guess our city’s moral character isn’t black or white, but instead a multitude of shades of grey.
