“In Service: MTA Photographs by Christopher Payne” is MTA Arts & Design’s first systemwide photography exhibition. It offers riders a rare, behind-the-scenes look at New York’s transit system, spotlighting the skilled workers who keep it running every day. 

For this special commission, Payne had unprecedented access to repair shops, manufacturing floors, and operational spaces at multiple MTA agencies and rolling stock partners. The resulting photographs reveal the unseen labor at the heart of the MTA with striking beauty and detail. Presented across 52 large lightboxes, "In Service" is the most extensive photography installation undertaken by Arts & Design and the first time a single photographer’s work has been showcased simultaneously throughout the transit system. 

Through vivid, thoughtfully composed images, the exhibition highlights the expertise and dedication of the workforce that maintains and manufactures the system’s essential components. To capture this infrastructure and its intricate networks, Payne often creates composite images built from multiple exposures taken over extended periods. This meticulous approach gives his photographs the calm, still quality that his sitters and industrial subjects often convey, despite the activity and sounds of their industrial surroundings. 

Displayed in five stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the exhibition is organized into themes that reflect the breadth of this behind‑the‑scenes world. At Grand Central Madison, photographs illustrate service at scale within the MTA’s five operating agencies, revealing the magnitude of operations and the human presence within them. At Grand Central Dining Concourse, worker portraits taken in maintenance and manufacturing spaces humanize and celebrate the care invested in the system’s infrastructure. The 42 St-Bryant Park installation features everyday components, reconsidered through Payne’s distinct visual approach. At Bowling Green, viewers can follow the stages of bus manufacturing and maintenance—from frame welding and the assembling of accessibility ramps to the final bus wash at the end of each route. At Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr, the lifecycle of subway cars is traced from Kawasaki R211 cars currently in production in Nebraska to testing in Yonkers and maintenance in overhaul shops. 

Explore the full exhibition and learn more about each photograph at Arts & Design’s Bloomberg Connects guide. 

“In Service: MTA Photographs by Christopher Payne” is curated by MTA Arts & Design Manager Maggie Murtha.  

42 St-Bryant Park      

Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr         

Bowling Green   

Grand Central Terminal Dining Concourse 

Grand Central Madison