We Spent Valentine’s Day In A Subway Station Looking At Art: 10 Years Of Love Tunnel NYC
‘The graffiti police came by earlier and put their hands up and went, ‘Huh? Eh.’’ Ruvan Wijesooriya, the NYC-based photographer and Love Tunnel founder commented to me as a puzzled MTA employee hobbled through the crowd of happy photo-pluckers huddled around hundreds of photo prints mounted upon a stretch of wall at the center of an infamously-long tunnel connecting the 1/2/3 trains to the L/F/M trains on 14th and 6th in Manhattan.
Wijesooriya has watched police and city officials shrug at his guerilla photography exhibition every Valentine’s Day for the last ten years. ‘The first year, I was afraid we’d be asked to leave. It felt illegal the first time… They don’t ever bother me. Now, I tell them to take a photo.’ It is unclear if they ever do despite hundreds of other lovelorn subway riders peeling a free photo off of the wall.
Oh, the photos are free. Amid the hundreds of love-themed prints sticky-tacked onto the tile are signs that ask you to pick one and take it home. ‘Take your favorite picture as a gift to yourself or a loved one’,’ and ‘A valentine from NYC to you.’
The show started ten years ago in the same way that so many artists tend to get anything done: late. From 2004 to 2014, Wijesooriya had amassed hundreds of photos of people kissing each other, and like any photographer capturing such moments of intimacy would, he promised each couple a print of their photo. Ten years of promising hundreds of people a 4x6 print starts to add up.
‘I needed to get them to the people I had promised.’
Over time, Wijesooriya began to integrate photos of love across many interpretations into the photos of people kissing each other. People hugging, people smiling. Lights in the shape of a heart. A cat getting its belly rubbed. A bouquet, well-held, now on the ground of a dance floor. The sun - or so it seems - warming you. The integration of these interpretations of love stimulated and diversified the conversations being had by the crowd of passing art lovers and helped them all - including Wijesooriya - to understand how interpretations and representations of love can be subtly or indirectly present in imagery. .
But why here? Why hold an event presenting hundreds of moments of love in the most dingy, inconvenient, arguably-disgusting location possible?
‘The idea allowed me to do many things. I wanted to activate a public space independently, to apply physical format in a time of digital overhaul, question the value of art and how it is distributed, bring conversation to strangers, give back to every day New Yorkers, and celebrate love and joy on a day known for unreasonable expectations around love and relationships. Blah blah. It felt right. Is that too wordy?’
Living in New York City is difficult. The subways are late. February is cold and unforgiving. It is easy to feel embattled or at the very least, tired. A free beautiful thing for the sake of having a beautiful thing isn’t wasted on those who stop to take one and smile for a moment. For ten years, Love Tunnel has inspired strangers to love, stare, interact, trade, converse, and find a moment to smile.
