In 1998, photographer Matthew Salacuse took hundreds of candid shots of New York City commuters, primarily on Thirty-fourth Street. This area was on the cusp of transformation, moving from a lively hub to a more orderly environment—a change he referred to as 'Disneyfication'. Inspired by his studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Salacuse aimed to capture fleeting moments of everyday life before they disappeared. After twenty years, he revisited those photos, reflecting on how time and place shape urban experience and personal memory, recognizing the changing essence of New York City.
In 1998, Salacuse was an emerging photographer, and very much a New York guy: he had grown up in Park Slope and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and had recently graduated from N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts.
During 1998 and 1999, he made dozens of trips to Thirty-fourth Street, clutching a medium-format point-and-shoot camera, roaming the blocks between the photo emporium B & H... and the Empire State Building.
He figured that if he hung out eight blocks farther downtown, on a different storied street, he might capture New York City's next major transformation.
What he found was not, really, a hidden gem but a rather charmless commuter thoroughfare full of people intent on getting where they were going.
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