My Morning Commute Artist Statement:

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My morning commute is only 35 minutes long (if the Subways are in my favor) but my home and my high school exist in separate worlds.

 

From home I walk a half-mile to the train. I pass shelters for the unhoused, methadone clinics, hair braiding parlors, and fast-food restaurants. The flower beds at the base of each street tree are filled with trash, needles, and cigarette butts. At the train station, the stairs wreak like urine, and police officers patrol every entrance. I take the downtown local train. Six stops later, I get off at a clean station with benches and interactive touch screen monitors. I walk another half-mile to my school. I pass doormen opening taxi doors, street cleaners, blow-dry only hair salons, and salad bars. The flower beds at the base of each street tree are filled with flowers.

 

These images capture the social stratification displayed on my commute to school. Through this body of work, I question how our social systems have preserved circumstances of segregation, I study the complexities of gentrification, and I criticize why my commute is accepted as normal.

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Emma Rehac

Fall 2019