Urban rivers of people

River of Shoppers, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Today is Friday, and I am sure that many of us will look forward to returning home on streets and highways that are again restored with traffic to some degree. These have always seemed like rivers to me, for the flow is there, and the direction as well. If you have ever experienced a very crowded marketplace – or let's say, Venice at the height of the tourist season – then you would know the feeling of being swept away by a current. Just like a river. 

During the depths of the pandemic, there were times when it seemed like it will never end. There were times when it seemed like the urban rivers had all dried up for good. How wonderful then to see that this is not the case, four things have improved, and the rivers have sprung back to life.

The image is the flow of shoppers through the Daxi Old Street market in Taiwan, which looked, and behaved, like a true river. This street in Taiwan is home to many shops, and is normally quite crowded on the weekends. There is a wonderful webcam there that surveys the street, and also pans from side to side to show the area just adjacent to the street.

This image, from my photobook, "Scenes from a World in Lockdown." is one of my favorites for it took me a while to figure out a way to show the movement in the street as a flow. I took many many pictures but none of them worked. What I realized is that aside from the photographic techniques, I needed people to be in a certain configuration to have this image come out as I wanted it to. Needless to say, it took a lot of trial and error before I got this result.

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