With the growth and revitalization of the Downtown Crossing neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts there existed a lot of major construction projects. The city approached 160over90 to create signage that would wrap around the facade of the construction, and also express the neighborhoods key message, “Downtown Crossing is Boston’s meeting place.” Rather than signage alone we chose to create a public art installation, using everyone in the neighborhood as our subject matter. We wanted to remind people to slow down and meet someone new in Downtown Crossing.

We staged a week long photo shoot, where we photographed close to 1,000 portraits of people passing through the neighborhood. These photos were then assembled into large prints that covered all the major construction projects in Downtown Crossing. The colorful circles with the word “MEET” were placed between each portrait, suggesting to passersby to stop and meet someone new in the neighborhood.

While it’s tough to choose favorites out of nearly a thousand photos, I managed to choose a few and posted them below the images of the actual art installation.

Created at 160over90, the team included:

Executive Creative Director: Darryl Cilli; Creative Director: Jim Walls; Art Director: Adam Flanagan; Copywriter: Brendan Quinn; Account Manager: Dan Giroux; Photographer: Matt Kalinowski