The New Yorker:

In the eighties, the photographer Kathy Shorr became a chauffeur, capturing working-class New Yorkers on their way to new lives.

By Alexandra Schwartz

In 1988, Kathy Shorr had just graduated from the School for Visual Arts with a B.F.A. in photography and was looking for new material to shoot. For her thesis, on ballroom dance, she had gone to dance studios all around New York, and she wanted to find another subject that would let her spend time with people, immersed in their environment—preferably something that would afford her a salary. She thought that she might drive a taxi, because she loved driving. But she realized that customers would be rushing in and out of the car, and the rides would be too short to take more than a couple of photos. So she decided to try chauffeuring a limousine instead.

Shorr got a job at a limo company in Red Hook, Brooklyn. “It was not a fancy place,” she told me recently. As a woman, and a young one, she was a novelty among her co-workers, men who drove as a career. Passengers were always surprised to see her, but not unpleasantly so. She started in the spring, the high season, and worked weekends, shuttling celebrants to proms, weddings, quinceañeras, and one lesbian commitment ceremony in the West Village; she stocked the car’s bar herself. “About an hour into the drive, I would say, ‘Oh, excuse me, I’m a photographer,’ ” Shorr recalled; would it be all right if she photographed her passengers for the rest of the trip? Save for one man, who was concerned about being recognized—“He was pretending to be an important person,” Shorr said—everyone agreed. She told her subjects that she hoped to make a book of the pictures. Now, thirty-six years later, she has: “Limousine,” which was published in November by Lazy Dog Press.

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