There are exuberant youths, straphangers dressed in a way that might draw attention anywhere but New York and actress Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grating with her skirt blown skyward by a breeze from a train below.
All of them are part of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority exhibit of photos of everyday life from another era on subway trains and platforms in observance of the 100th birthday of the New York City subway.
The 16 photos are on display in the Lower Level dining area of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
One photo by famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson has subway riders clinging to old-fashioned metal straps and engrossed in newspapers and books.
Another is of a boy and his view from the head car of a subway train, a vista of the tracks and a seemingly endless border of brownstones. There are youths grandstanding on an elevated platform and tired-looking commuters of various descriptions.
As most Marilyn Monroe fans know, the blonde bombshell was not actually a fellow commuter when the leggy photo of her was made on the night of Sept. 9, 1954. The occasion was a midnight press event to publicize the movie, “The Seven Year Itch.” Hundreds of photographers, most of them using car-battery-size cameras called Speed Graphics, shot flash pictures of Marilyn at 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue near the Trans-Lux movie theater. The photos became classics.
The photos from the Magnum Photos agency on display at Grand Central were taken by Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Leonard Freed, Bruce Gilden, Thomas Hoepker, Constantine Manos, Inge Morath, Lise Sarfati and Ferdinand Scianni.
—Philip Newman
