If there were such merchandise as vials containing extracts of scents specific to a city, I would collect a set of them for each city I visit. Each vial would have a special power to transport me back to a particular time and space – roasting chestnuts by Notre Dame, fresh baked goods at the corner of rue Rousselet and rue de Sèvres, mulled wine at the Christmas market in Gendarmenmarkt, brown coal in a friend’s old East Berlin apartment, coffee brewing at the bagel stand every morning outside my building in Chelsea, steam rising from the manholes on 8th avenue, burning pretzels by Rockefeller…, the list goes on. To preserve that special force of transportation back to a place in memory, I would have to use them very rarely. Then maybe I can write like Marcel with the little madeleine dipped in his tea. When I miss a lover in the past, I stop by Sephora and take a whiff of the cologne he wore daily or the shampoo he used. That is usually enough to bring back the memory of how he looked and felt. The perfume vials of cities would do the same. The smells of Paris would conjure up gray colors, moody daylight, silence at night, and those of Berlin would conjure up colorful graffiti on the walls, crumbling bricks, and the distinct whizzing sound of U-Bahn. The examples are endless, since I’ve lived in urban environments all my life spanning three different continents. During the last seven years, New York City has grown to be my favorite one. The island of Manhattan alone has such dense mysterious network of man-made structures soaring 1500 feet aboveground and digging 800 feet belowground that five boroughs together connected with more than thirty-five bridges and tunnels make the city a miraculous feat incomparable to any others. The anatomy of the city is complex like that of a human being, both physically and psychologically. My life here has been so rich with diverse emotions that I have learned to love the city much more than to hate it, but the feeling of antipathy is a part of my relationship with New York City. From time to time I go through some intense aversion to the crowds that surround me – the neighbors listen through the thin walls everything I do and say; the silhouettes in the windows make me paranoid when my curtains are open; the strangers in the street frown and speed to get to work; and the nightclub crowds…. I remember participating in the nightlife scene like a prodigal child. There were always cheerful and lively activities, yet I became often disgusted at myself mingling with superficial socialites and name-droppers. Increasingly I could identify with classical authors like Baudelaire who indulged in the decadence of urban life and suffered from severe bouts of depression, inertia, and isolation, which the term spleen embodied. When I started looking at the city through the camera lens, I finally began to see the hidden layers with an excitement similar to what a child feels looking up at the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the first time. Looking down at the subway tracks, I spotted more and more rats scurrying about to find scraps of food. Inside the trains, I looked out the windows and identified white, ghost-like graffiti flying by. Walking around Chelsea galleries and snapping photographs, I noticed the elevated train tracks running through various buildings and wondered what remained on the tracks. I started pointing my camera at the manholes, the orange and white cylinders with massive steam rising above, and the metal gratings on which dogs like to urinate. Then I spotted New York Underground by Julia Solis on display in Barnes and Noble, and came to a shock while flipping through the book and observing the illustrations. After doing some research on the author I was able to meet her and many other people who were extremely knowledgeable in urban ruins and underground spaces in New York City. Many of those adventurers helped me realize my desire to feel not only the skin of the city but also the inner linings of its intestines and veins, swarmed with miniscule life forms and filled with collective memories. Going into an abandoned tunnel in Hell’s Kitchen is like peeking into another’s deep, dark thoughts that have been buried and repressed. The first time going in alone, I was terrified, but I had to do it, because I could not bear to be in my apartment alone. There are two kinds of loneliness. One mars creativity and one nurtures artistic imagination. At the time I started to visit that disused tunnel, I was often languid and melancholic. Sitting in front of my computer listening to the ventilation noise and the neighbor’s phone rings made me numb and drowsy, and I could not think. It was the worst kind of loneliness as I felt deserted by the world around me and yet felt so entrapped in the tight network of people jammed into small spaces. One of many short pensive paragraphs cluttering my journal attempts to describe the dreadful mood:
I feel sad and empty again, today. Day after day the insatiable empty room just sits inside, somewhere in between my heart and my stomach. That room is empty, but why so heavy? What is it made of? Should I try to fill it up or take it out? Or do nothing. Just live with it. I don’t know…. I cannot know.

Fig.1. Temporary bed and old chair in the Hell’s Kitchen tunnel.

Gradually the neglected tunnel became one of many mirrors of that room inside me. At first looking into the black opening of that tunnel, I was disturbed by a mixture of fear and desire. Even so my curiosity was overwhelming, and I took a step forward. Continuing on, I started to see the Manhattan schist exposed – the famous bedrock that was formed about 450 million years ago. This hollow space was full of ghosts: the workers that toiled to dig through the rocks more than a hundred years ago, the countless homeless people who lived there in the 80’s, and the graffiti artists who ventured there with their spray cans. So many memories were dimly lit by reddish light bulbs, but they did not illuminate the dark corners into which many once hid themselves. I could almost hear whispers coming from those nooks. At the end of the abandoned freight tracks, there was an empty bed that seemed to be currently in use. My first impulse was to grab the chance to mark the space as my own, although I was the intruder. As fast as possible with shaking hands I set up my camera on tripod and disrobed myself for exposure. Right then,a figure loomed through darkness. It was a man walking slowly without a flashlight. I hid myself and dressed up, and repeatedly yelled out, “excuse me!” There was no answer. I saw a tired old man coming to his own bed. Then, with all the bravery I could muster, I walked towards him with my bare feet, and simply said “hello.” He sat down on the black office chair that I’ve seen in a photo taken more than ten years ago for Julia Solis. I explained to him politely that I was working on an art project and asked him if he didn’t mind me working there for a little while. No, he didn’t mind. So I took off my clothes again, asked him to move back out of the picture frame, adjusted the tripod, and put the camera on 20-second self-timer. The running back and forth between the camera and the tracks was repeated several times, then I dressed again and sat down to clean my muddy feet. He offered me his shirt, but I politely declined and used my baby wipes. Slowly and thoroughly I cleaned off the grime and put the socks and shoes back on, and sat next to the old man for a couple of cigarettes and a chat. For my performance, the one-man audience was a good one – he seemed understanding in his aloof silence. In my mind, he is a dweller in one of the darkest rooms in the collective unconsciousness of all inhabitants of New York and possibly of all modern cities.

Only about a year ago, I became fully aware of the recent history of the underground homeless in New York City by coming across the book, The Mole People, by Jennifer Toth. I had heard somewhere about crazy animal-like people living in the subway tunnels, but the fantastic image had quickly receded into the subconscious. Majority of New Yorkers probably have heard at least once about homeless people living with rats in dark caverns underneath the city, but a story like that does not register into the consciousness of a normal city-dweller. Most, including myself until I picked up that book, simply do not care. The underground homeless population exemplifies what constitutes an event purposefully ignored and forgotten in the course of history of New York. Jennifer Toth speaks of how difficult it is to find true information on this elusive mass of people.
The population of the underground homeless is not known precisely, and estimates are controversial. Transit and welfare authorities prefer to give sanguine estimates, in part to reduce the fear among commuters about the potential threat of these tunnel people, in part to mute criticism of their efforts and their budgets to attack the problem. No census of the underground population has been taken, but a 1986 study for the mayor’s office estimated that five thousand people lived in the subway system alone. […] A 1991 survey by the New York Health Department counted 6,031 homeless in the Grand Central and Penn stations alone. (Toth, 39)

Fig.2. Debris under a mural by Freedom, who made a series of gigantic paintings for the homeless under Riverside Park

In her footnote, Toth writes that both of these estimates were internal and unpublished, and provided to her by individuals. Upon reading about the nightmarish tales of pain, filth, violence, and romance in these unpredictable lives, I became impatiently curious to inquire into the underground spaces that were once occupied but now mostly empty. Exploring the traces of past strewn in the city’s deserted rooms offered me an escape from paralyzing melancholia. When I started physically delving into these spaces, it was astonishing to see the debris and refuse from the massive homeless communities that once existed but dispersed. In the Amtrak tunnel under Riverside Park, which housed hundreds of people, as depicted in The Mole People and the film, The Dark Days, I felt incredibly peaceful. It was rarely frequented by humans, except for a few that probably still live there, and I only saw one of them nonchalantly riding through the tunnel on his bicycle. Greg, the man I met in the abandoned Hell’s Kitchen tunnel, told me that he was alone and would move around often to avoid the authorities that will put him in Riker’s Island. I didn’t ask why they would put him there, but I could see in his gnarled visage that he must have undergone many difficulties aboveground. Lighting his cigarette with the matches I offered him, he seemed calm and relieved, while telling me how quiet it was to be in that tunnel. He told me I could come back anytime, even if he would be sleeping, and thanked me dearly for talking to him.

Fig.3. Lonely swan swimming by the Sugar Factory.

When I venture for the first time into some underground or derelict spaces, I feel nervous and excited, and sometimes afraid of potential danger. However, the element of overcoming fear and taking risk is not always prominent in these excursions. Many of the modern ruins I visit are peaceful and enchanting. The Sugar Factory, for example, offers a sanctuary for urban wildlife. Decaying metal tanks are immersed in tall weeds and sunken rooftops are interlocked with trees stretching their limbs. In summer, green leaves embrace rusty metal and broken cement. In winter, the snow quietly falls on exposed beams and machinery. The fields of snow remain untouched except by feral dogs and birds and other small creatures. I almost felt guilty leaving my own footprints, which were the only human ones in the entire complex on a peninsula that measures about 800 feet by 600 feet. The pier that once transported massive quantities of molasses and sugar now sits on its last legs, and the only traffic that disturbs its water consists of ducks and swans and seagulls. Roaming around naked in this haven was a marvelous experience, because I felt so natural and liberated. I had momentarily become one with the sprouting nature that had engulfed the decaying man-made structures.

Photography then is one of my attempts to make that magical moment of assimilation more permanent, by freezing it into still images. When the land of urban wilderness is redeveloped into a mall or condominiums, I will look through the photographs and wonder where the pack of dogs would have gone. The animals who were once so free would be put behind grated metal gates and succumbed to the needles. One significant motivating force in Naked City Spleen is the identification with the creatures that inhabit the forgotten and forbidden urban spaces. Images of my body in the photographs appear to impersonate the condition of freedom which is intrinsic to all sentient living beings.

Toth, Jennifer. The Mole People.
Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press, Inc., 1993.