Award winning photojournalist Christopher Morris, well-known for his documentation of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, began his career documenting the NYC subway for six months as an intern for the photo agency Black Star. TIME, who Morris is a contract photographer for, recently released some rare photos from this period of his career. "Morris' work provides a window on a long-gone New York, a metropolis that once pulsed with a very different energy - a frenetic, dangerous tone - than one feels in most of the city's neighborhoods today. But even back then, as Morris' pictures attest, Gotham remained an always fascinating and, at times, disarmingly beautiful place."