Shorr’s side job as a stretch limousine driver in the late 80s provided rich material for her series on working-class New Yorkers in high celebration mode
• See more of Kathy Shorr’s limousine photos here
Driving limousines in New York taught Kathy Shorr a lot about human nature. “Working-class guys were the best tippers,” she recalls. “They understood that the tip was going to make the driver’s day or evening. The worst were the people who had money: the more money it seemed that somebody had, the cheaper they were.” One particular man hired the limousine for the afternoon to propose to his girlfriend: Shorr bought flowers and drinks for the couple, and it took military precision, timing and coordination to get them from their upmarket brownstone building to Times Square for the exact moment a sign would appear on the billboard with her name on it, asking her to marry him. It all went off without a hitch: they got there at the right time, saw the message, she said yes. But at the end of the trip, nothing. The next day the man complained, saying the limousine was too cold.
Even more galling, because of all the strategising involved, she didn’t even get a picture of them. In 1989, as a recent graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Shorr had decided to take a job as a limousine driver in her native Brooklyn to photograph the people she drove around. At first she had considered driving taxis, but the customers would have been in and out too quickly, constantly in a hurry, while driving a limo gave her several hours with her passengers. So, for nine months in 1989 and 1990, she worked weekends for a downtown limo company. “I would describe them as being on the low end of the limousine hierarchy,” she says. “Drivers had to provide liquor and mixers for their clients, and everything was a bit shabby and cheap.”
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