In Louis Faurer's 1946 "Staten Island Ferry," alternatively titled "I Once Dreamed About the Most Beautiful City in the World," the photographer distills postwar longing and metropolitan solitude beyond mere urban transit.

This masterwork transforms routine ferry journeys into meditations on human existence within New York's phantasmagorical landscape. The photograph exemplifies Faurer's mastery of complex visual layering through reflections, double exposures, and architectural elements that blur reality and illusion.

Through the ferry window, Manhattan's skyline appears doubly reflected, creating what critics described as having "the impression of a slideshow on a dark curtain." Faurer's technical arsenal—sandwiched negatives, night lighting, blur, and misexposure—blended into his "peculiar visual stew with a decidedly personal edge."

Created during New York's pivotal postwar transformation, this image captures passengers in contemplative moments amid urban tumult. The Staten Island Ferry, serving as a vital transportation link since 1905, carried thousands of daily commuters between the boroughs.

Faurer distinguished himself through his uncanny eye for people radiating privacy and inner life—individuals emblematic of human struggle across time and place. His work avoided conventional mid-century narratives, instead revealing urban existence's psychological undercurrents.

The photograph's alternative title reveals Faurer's romantic yet melancholic relationship with New York. His quiet images freeze-frame typically overlooked moments, demonstrating photography's power to preserve daily life's fleeting poetry. This masterpiece continues resonating as both documentary evidence and artistic meditation, capturing the eternal human condition of waiting, dreaming, and yearning within the metropolitan maze.