Nicholas Ryan

Everywhere we go we leave a trace, sometimes a footprint, other times a gum wrapper, even a smudge on glass; all echoes of past passers by. People, who if not for the physical marks they left on the world, would have their existence completely unknown to us. You can find these echoes everywhere you look, a sort of fossil record of day to day human activity. “Who was the person who left their fingerprints on the window of this subway car?”, “What was their name?”, “Where were they going?” - all questions with unknowable answers, interactions and moments doomed to obscurity. Nuanced and incidental occurrences are drowned away in a bustling metropolis, such is the curse of a city. We couldn’t possibly record all the infinite and mundane fleeting events that pass us by in seconds, but sometimes we can see their ripples. Where people's paths overlapped, intersected and diverged. We can look at where they once stood, even if just for a moment, and wonder who they were. Because even if the attachment to such an insignificant and extinct moment bears no meaning at all, we can look upon the marks left by the anonymous and know they were once here.

All the photos I captured for this project were shot somewhere in Boston, over the course of shooting this project I came to the conclusion that ‘Urban Echoes’ present themselves more easily in denser populated areas. Quite a few of my final images are shot in train stations, and in a way it’s almost the perfect place to find an Urban Echo; they’re highly trafficked, well worn, and mundane. The most notable image of my collection in my personal opinion is the photo of the half-smoked cigarette on the bench of a subway station, because I think it perfectly embodies the essence of what I had imagined and Urban Echo to be.

I pulled a lot of inspiration for my project from a photographer by the name of Mark Webber and the recently emerging “Sizz” aesthetic style. I highly suggest that if my photos pique your interest that you look into the Sizz art movement and Mark Webber. You can find more at reddit.com/r/Sizz and @markwebber_ on instagram.