Sea Train by Stephen Mallon at the New-York Transit Museum

June, 19th 2019
SEA TRAIN: SUBWAY REEF PHOTOS by Stephen Mallon
www.nytransitmuseum.org

Photographer Stephen Mallon’s images, many seen here for the first time, capture our collective imagination, and serve up the seemingly impossible: iconic subway cars, repurposed to become an artificial reef on the ocean floor.
These symbols of industry and busy city life, which carried millions of passengers along New York City’s iron rails for decades, appear shrunken in scale when set against the vastness of the Atlantic seascape. Dropped like toys by brightly-colored cranes off hulking barges between 2001 and 2010, these decommissioned train cars now begin the next chapter of their useful life – as a flourishing new habitat for marine life.