The Veins of a City: Mass Transit Photography
© Andre D. Wagner
You never know what you might see on the subway. Something about being crammed into a steel cabin, without fresh air or personal space, seems to bring out the oddest iterations of our urban environments: a pet snake, a man dressed as big bird, a troupe of pole dancers, a flutist performing between stations, and of course the infamous pizza rat. Many New Yorkers are familiar with @subwaycreatures, the silly yet all-too-real depiction of life on New York’s subway, one of the busiest systems in the world, alongside Beijing, Paris, Moscow and Tokyo.
The rail lines are the veins of our cities, pumping residents — the lifeblood — through their territories, connecting communities and giving our metropolises their remarkable vitality. So what about the human experience behind our daily commutes? There is something about the process of being jostled alongside fellow train riders, the swell of crowds and its dissipation moving like a tide between stations, that connects us to one another. Several artists have moved to uncover the humanity and beauty of our mass transit systems in their photographs, looking not at the painted murals or yards of advertisements that stretch the length of a platform, but at the beautiful moments in between the madness.
© Peter Steinhauer - petersteinhauer.com
Peter Steinhauer’s images of the Washington, D.C. Metro are studiously devoid of humans. Instead, they are vivid meditations on the beauty of the city’s railway. Designed by architect Harry Weese in the late 1960’s, the Metrorail is not just a means of transport, but an architectural delight. As a resident of D.C., Steinhauer reminds his fellow passengers to pause amidst the chaos and take a moment to reflect on the beauty of their surroundings. Instead of the single-mindedness with which most commuters approach their daily comings and goings, his images elevate the underground stations to something much more than a space passed through. Through his lens, they are transformed into art.
© Alyssa Schukar
In Chicago, photographer Alyssa Schukar focuses her eye on the passengers that crowd the city’s ‘L’ train each day. Through an assignment for US News & World Report, Schukar began to document the second largest transit system in the country. When viewed as a series, the project can be understood as a celebration; not just a of the expansive ‘L’, but of the diversity Schukar was able to capture in her photos. Chicago’s layers are peeled back and laid bare for any viewer, and her photography transforms those quotidian moments into something worthy of notice.
© Terry Hall - www.terryhallphoto.com / @teephoto1981
The Underground shuttles 5 million passengers each day throughout the sprawl of London, with 11 lines connecting 270 stations. Photographer Terry Hall creates images of the train lines that are not just aesthetically pleasing, but conjure the feeling of the train’s riders. Using motion blur to express the passing of a train or, in some cases, the frantic movement of travelers throughout the stations, Hall’s images encapsulate the hurried pace of commuting, and the high-speed tempo of London’s heartbeat.
© Andre Wagner
Andre Wagner spent three years documenting his commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan on New York City’s subway. This years-long documentation resulted in a collection of photography, Here for the Ride, published in 2017. As Wagner says of the project, Here for the Ride “chronicles the everyday life of people.” His photographs are a compilation of the expected and the unexpected, like every subway ride in New York. The result is an in-depth portrait of a city, one that depicts not just its inhabitants, but the multitudes it contains.
And that is what any good photographer does when looking at the veins of a city. To explore mass transit is to find where the character of a subject meets the soul of the city they inhabit. When a photographer can express that in an image, they create something worth lingering over.
© Andre Wagner
