Halloween
Underground
NEW YORK SUBWAY PORTRAITS
Book by Seymour Licht
Seymour Licht crisscrossed the New York subway at the end of a work day, riding among the 9-5ers heading home in their unremarkable street clothes and anticipated the revelers preening in their outfits as the prelude to the largest Halloween parade in the world - or some private night out where creativity is the currency and mystery and flirtation the prize. He searched out scenarios where the absurd melds into the banal, but could also be comic, outrageous or spellbinding - a gigantic Frog Prince who clutches the subway pole, a gleaming crown topping his head, Iron Man using his strength to keep open the closing subway doors, his body spanning their breadth, Carrie from Stephen King’s horror movie carrying a bouquet of flowers drenched in blood. Halloween is New York in its most heightened state of quirky ingenuity.
The subway becomes the unofficial backstage to the main events of the night, the dark tunnels and ghastly lit platforms, the holding room of the supernatural, eerie and phantasmagorical protagonists. These characters are direct descendants of the first celebrants of the ancient pagan holiday that evolved over two millenia from a ritual dedicated to warding off evil spirits to the highly commercialized trick or treat of post World War II America.
You may dream of going out in public dressed as a Pharaoh, a seductive witch, an axe murderer or a mermaid. It is only on Halloween that you can enthusiastically change your identity without so much as a sideway glance from your fellow passengers, and the subway is the perfect mode to transport you from the mundane to the mystifying. Not long before daybreak, the pandemonium abates, and the world becomes ordinary again. With his Halloween portraits Seymour Licht hopes to preserve the outbursts of creativity in his serendipitous encounters during this beloved holiday in New York’s underground.
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