Last Stop

Photography documenting the last stop on every New York subway line -- a completely new view on the City's life.

Over the course of a year, Brian Rose set out to photograph all the neighborhoods at the ends of the subway lines in New York City. He had multiple reasons for engaging in such a project, but the strongest was the desire to portray New York as a highly diverse, multi-centered metropolis. Having spent a major part of his career photographing the city through often challenging times – the dichotomy of destruction and creativity of the 1980s, the mortal wounding of 9/11, and the suspended animation of the Covid-19 pandemic – Rose was perhaps uniquely equipped to document the city at this moment of political uncertainty under the increased strain of new arrivals, many of whom are refugees from around the world. For a new generation of New Yorkers, the trains roll on ceaselessly, and despite the title, Last Stop is not so much about endings as it is about reinvention.

Brian Rose studied at Cooper Union with photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Larry Fink. His documentation of lower Manhattan over a 20-year period resulted in three books – Time and Space on the Lower East Side, Metamorphosis, and WTC, a chronicle of the Twin Towers and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. His study of Berlin after the fall of the Wall led to The Lost Border, The Landscape of the Iron Curtain; and his documentation of Donald J Trump’s failed casino enterprises in Atlantic City resulted in Atlantic City (Circa Press, 2019). His photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.