During last week’s centennial celebration, sentimentality was heaped upon the subway. But in 1980, when photographer Bruce Davidson was shooting his book Subway, riding the train could be dicey. So he wore a safari jacket and carried a knife. “I pretended I was a tiger hunter,” he says. It was in this getup that he came upon Joan Bernardi, a 39-year-old JCPenney receptionist on the 7 train. “Her eyes looked like the eyes of the animal she was wearing,” says Davidson, who photographed her again last week. Bernardi—now a hostess at Bloomingdale’s Le Train Bleu—says that when Davidson first approached her, she was wary: “I just said okay so he’d get it over with and go away.”

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer Features”
• Table of Contents: November 8, 2004 issue of New York | Subscribe!