Positive Disruptions: Improv Everywhere’s NYC Subway Yearbook Photos
Earlier this month, Improv Everywhere set up a make-shift photo studio on NYC Subway trains, claiming that the MTA had hired them to create a yearbook of passengers.
Riders who obliged sat for typical elementary-school style photos, complete with fabric backdrop and silver photo umbrellas — inside a moving train!
Improv Everywhere NYC Subway Train yearbook photo shoot
I love this kind of stuff. It’s been a recent theme for me lately — what I’m calling Positive Disruptions. Improv Everywhere call their projects “missions.” I’ve heard other people refer to them as “pranks,” but I think that term could imply an intention to annoy or aggrevate the subjects, but just read this blurb from their FAQ:
Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. Our missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants
…and that’s what a positive disruption is all about. Yes, you’re being disruptive — you’re disrupting the daily routines of ordinary people, but it’s all for the sake of good, clean fun!
What I particularly like about the yearbook mission is that it took a group of strangers, otherwise indifferent to one another, and got them involved in an activity that had them interacting with one another. In capturing the riders of a particular train at a particular moment in time, the group of strangers is brought together in a common activity that allows them to chat and get to know each other. And then the photoset serves as an artifact of that group of people who shared a nice moment together one day:
New York Subway Train Yearbook page from Improv Everywhere
When I lived in New York, there were regulars that I would see on the same train over and over, but there was never a reason to talk to them. Culturally, it wouldn’t have been acceptable to strike up a conversation for no good reason, but they were essentially my neighbors and why not get to know them? As far as I can tell, bringing people together in this way wasn’t a stated goal of this mission, but it certainly was a nice result!
Here’s the full photoset from the mission.
~ via Laughing Squid