Water Station, 1994

One day in the dark room in 1994, I spontaneously started combining negatives of subway stations and waters -which I shot at East River off Battery Park- on the same paper. 

The result encouraged me to do more. After I finished the series of pictures of subways stations with waters, my creative energy expanded to entire New York City.  Soon I ran around the city and shot various monuments and combined them with natural objects such as clouds and water in the dark room. 

That was a labor of love, that I had to stay in the dark room for hours in order to get just one perfectly blending image.

When I first exhibited this image in the group show in 1995, some people assumed this was actual flooding scene that occurred in some NYC subway stations in 1992. (Actually, that flooding was happened in the downtown area stations, not in the 86th street station!)

Then some young people asked me if I created this with computer. They seemed love this "Cool" image.  Computer generated image manipulation was still new and hip then.

Although, I started learning Photoshop the following year and acquired the skill to make images like this instantly,  I had never felt the same excitement that I felt in the dark room. 

Still, I love this one of a kind image best of all my works.