September 26, 2009 — Patrick Zimmerman

Elegant Nostalgia and Utter Loneliness: All Hail to Taxi Cabs!

Photography by: Joseph O. Holmes

Are you talkin’ to me?

Well, I’m the only one here.

–Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver”

All Hail to Taxi Cabs! is a superb collection of beautiful photographs taken of taxi cabs from all around the world. From our own perspective of experiences as passengers riding in the cabs cruising around our towns and cities, many of the photographs of the taxis presented here are both old and rare, and can elicit both feelings of nostalgic reminiscence and memories from earlier times in our lives.

But these remarkable photographs draw upon yet another perspective, that of the often isolated taxicab driver. “Are you talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here,” said Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. It is this last line, “Well, I’m the only one here,” that has seldom ever gotten quoted. Yet, it stands as perhaps the truest line in the film. In a sense, taxi drivers throughout the world represent people with a desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow, to share or mimic the effortless social interactions they see all around them, but in which they can’t or don’t really participate. This feeling of utter loneliness is at the center of the film Taxi Driver. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Fortunately, most of us are better at dealing with it.

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