Using my Leica 3A, I made this view from a NYCTA city bus in The Bronx circa 1980.
I don’t have any notes at all from this trip.
In all likelihood, I was using a 35mm Nikkor lens with a screw-mount designed for the Leica 3 series cameras. This was a favorite of mine at the time because it required an adjustable external viewfinder that made it easier to compose than the tiny window on the camera body.
The primary subject of the photo was the subway train on what I think was the White Plains Road elevated line. At right is my brother Sean. We were traveling with our grandmother from Fordham Road toward Co-op City as part of a shopping trip.
This photo has been quietly hiding, unprinted and unseen in a glassine negative sleeve for nearly 40 years! (Try that with your favorite phone photo.)
Tracking the Light Looks Back!
That is one of the reasons I continue to expose a portion of my work on film, which I process using establish archival methods and store appropriately.
About 40 years in a glassine sleeve — my son-in-law who makes his living in high tech, predicts that when the archaeologists come to dig up our civilization, they will find records up to about the mid-1990s (i.e. paper, film, glassine) and beyond that… nothing. In other words, our digital storage methods are not nearly as permanent as we assume. Scary.
My favorite rail experience in The Bronx has to do with traveling between Grand Central Station and Boston.
Sitting on the right side of seats I marveled as high density landscape of The Bronx ebbed away after viewing Co-Op City.
Then an unimpeded view of Long Island Sound entered into my sight line. I marveled at the juxtaposition of The Bronx in one moment and the view of the Sound in the next moment.