Nguan moved back to Singapore many years ago—his pastel images of apartment dwellers, and of streets thick with bougainvillea, are well known—but still spends a couple of months in New York every spring or summer. In 2013, after his father died, he found a photograph of him standing on a boat, in view of the Statue of Liberty. This made Nguan think about the Staten Island ferry, which passes the statue on its path between Staten Island and Manhattan. The small fleet of boats, old and new, runs twenty-four hours a day and serves more than sixteen million passengers a year. It has been part of New York City’s public-transit system since 1905, but dates back further in concept, to a Lenape network of canoes and landings, and piraguas run by European settlers. Nguan had wanted to do a project about commuters in New York, but the subway was too cramped and dark; he works only with natural light. On the Staten Island ferry, as evening approached, the sun’s rays would “cut right through the boat and illuminate everything within,” he said. “Even the most ordinary, mundane person can look iconic.” The boats were rarely full, so he had space enough to make pictures of individuals, couples, and rows of family and friends.
