“If Third Avenue was the heart of the neighborhood, Moses tore it out.” 

—Robert Caro, The Power Broker

Walk along Third Avenue. It has two levels of traffic, one on the Gowanus Expressway above and the local traffic below, with a meridian full of parked vehicles. The noise of cars and trucks is deafening. Shout louder if you want to tell me something. The air smells of exhaust. Try not to breathe. Once the heart of an immigrant neighborhood, served by public transportation, it is now a way to get from Brooklyn to somewhere else. Traces of the neighborhood that was here before the Expressway was built on top of the Third Avenue El can be seen if you look carefully. Lower rents still draw immigrant families to co-exist with car washes, auto repair shops, video stores that moved here when they were zoned out of Times Square. Third Avenue has come to serve as a border, between Sunset Park’s waterfront industrial zone and its residential area, both undergoing gentrification and those forces are beginning to be felt here too. Still, Third Avenue is a wound in the fabric of the city, a place where the price for the individual mobility promised by cars is a visceral experience.

I have been walking here, up and down from 18th Street to 59th Street for about 4 years. In the evening, longer exposures capture the light trails of passing vehicles, recording something of the constant movement of cars and trucks, making an ugly reality beautiful at least to the camera.