How a Photographer Took the Same Picture for Years
A story, quote, and lesson on how our routines define us
Old habits die hard.
Every morning between 2007 and 2016, Danish photographer Peter Funch stood at the same corner, 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in New York City, camera in hand, watching the crowd flow past.
From 8:30 to 9:30 AM, he captured the same faces day after day, commuters moving through their morning rituals like clockwork. Same time, same place, same expressions.
Over nearly a decade, he amassed thousands of portraits, each one a still frame of someone lost in repetition: coffee in hand, headphones in, eyes glazed by routine.
Yet when he stitched the images together, something incredible emerged: you could see the same people, years apart, wearing nearly the same clothes, walking the same line, living the same morning.
What began as a photography project became a quiet meditation on human habit, how our days blur into patterns that both comfort and trap us.
The truth is, we all have our “42nd and Vanderbilt.” The route we take, the seat we pick, the morning we live on autopilot. Routine gives structure, a sense of order in chaos. It anchors us. But it also dulls awareness.
“The one thing you can say quite positively is that in their heads, Funch’s subjects are practically anywhere except the space through which their physical bodies are moving.”
- Douglas Copland, Canadian novelist reflecting on Funch’s work.
What Funch’s lens revealed is both beautiful and unsettling: people rarely notice the years passing because their actions stay the same.
Yet within those small daily rituals lies immense power. Every habit: brushing your teeth, writing, exercising, scrolling, compounds quietly. Over time, those repetitions shape who we become, whether we like it or not.
Maybe not all choices are equally as important but one thing is clear: good habits make our routines serve us; bad ones make us serve them.
You get closer to your savings goals when you skip that morning coffee run and brew your own instead. You open the door to new connections when you walk without your headphones once in a while. You start your day with more energy when you rise with your first alarm and make time to move your body.
The question shouldn’t be whether we are the product of our own habits. We are. The real question is whether those habits are building us up or wearing us down.
So now I ask you:
Which routines in your life are leading you somewhere and which are just keeping you busy or, even worse, leading you astray?
Life seems the same everyday, but it is not, every day we grow older. Give thanks if we can still do what we are used to do. It is a big gift. Let us appreciate it.
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