“There are no footprints in the city, no paths to be worn. The impression we leave is obliterated the moment our foot rises from the concrete. We walk the same blocks, pass the same buildings, but there’s no rapport to be built up, no intimacy to achieve. We could leave at any time and another would immediately take our place. Come springtime I’m always walking. Anywhere. I’ll pick up a bottle of beer and wander aimlessly for hours. I’ve lived in my neighborhood long enough to have a store of memories for specific locales—houses I used to visit where I had a friend or lover, corners where I used to cop and the brand names peddled at each location—”No Way Out,” “D.O.A,” “On De Down Low,” “Deuces Wild,” “Crazy 8;” the Hasidic bakery, now a Chinese joint, where I would stop in every morning for a pastry before walking to work; buildings I watched burn, now rehabilitated and bustling with people moving in. A street can lead me back over my past, then jolt me back to the present so it seems I can round a corner and as I step off the curb seven years of living have passed before me.” —Christopher O’Connell, from “Williamsburg Seizure Suites” in Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from The Portable Lower East Side.
(These photographs are part of Visitors, an ongoing series of street photography on Boston’s mass transit.)
Chris Bronsk 