At a lone subway station in New York City, a woman in red stands beneath the awning. Her dress is reflected in the pole and the nearby building. The contrast is apparent when set against the backdrop of the shaded, dark platform. That’s how most subways are. Strangers standing next to each other but shrouded in complete mystery. Nothing more than gypsies traveling to a myriad of destinations. This daily ritual can hardly be seen as something beautiful, at least to the people who do the traveling themselves every day. And yet, when the pandemic hit and effectively shut down the city, it felt like there was a missing part to everyone’s daily routine. That missing part was the daily commute by subway.

In 1970, the subway was decimated by the financial crisis, and infrastructure and government programs were ill-funded. The subway was in the worst shape of its life. Crime was at an all-time high. There was little to no maintenance and upkeep. However, even in the arguably worst state the subway had ever been seen in years, Bruce Davidson still saw beauty in it. In an interview with the Howard Greenberg Gallery, Davidson explained his inspiration to depict the subway at its most desolate time: “It’s important that there’s a meaning to my photographs, a passion that sustains me, and a clear reason for being there. In 1979/1980 the subway contained all those things for me.”

Davidson became famous while developing a photo essay on a Brooklyn street gang, the Jokers. He is used to taking photos of communities that are hostile to outsiders, which can even be seen in some of the pictures featured in Subway, first published in Aperture 1986. Although he originally started with black and white photographs on the subway, he soon transitioned to color photographs, believing that this medium better embodied the message he was trying to convey.

Davidson is also unique in that, to cover the subway’s darker, more grimy elements, he had to employ flash. It meant inserting himself as a part of the narrative. Whenever he photographed subjects using flash, he was no longer a bystander.

He said that, in his three to four years working on this collection, he came to know a lot of his subjects more personally. To the people that were wary or outright hostile to his photography of them on the subway, he brought around a small album of his past photos to show them. One man with a scar threatened to punch him if Davidson took a photo, but Davidson managed to convince the man to agree to a photo. It is this interpersonal story that is seen so clearly in the photographs. Whether the person is wide-eyed or distracted, reading a book or looking off in the distance, Davidson did exactly as he set out to do, “I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day.”

Davidson is not alone in his fascination with the subway, which he calls “a great social equalizer … From the moving train above ground, we see glimpses of the city, and as the train moves into the tunnels, sterile fluorescent light reaches into the stony gloom and we, trapped inside, all hang on together.” It is the one part of the city where every single person comes into some form of contact with each other, whether it be through noise or physical presence. In a time when the coronavirus and stilted daily life reign, Davidson’s truthful, no-holds-barred work may be exactly what we need today. We may be all individual souls standing on platforms waiting to head to our destinations, but, hopefully, we are standing on Davidson’s platform so he can remind us of how interconnected we all are.

More of Bruce Davidson’s series can be seen here.