As spaces that shape our lives together and invite us to reflect on who we are, public transportation areas should help restore meaning to the contemporary city. Faced with environments that often evoke confinement, we move simply from one point to another, overlooking what encounters with others can offer. We shut ourselves off, forgetting that this underground world—this zone of transition with the surface—is more than mere infrastructure. It carries not only people, but also stories, emotions, experiences. By forgetting this, we forget that we are bound to one another within a community of shared obligations, neglecting the contribution of public spaces to social relations.
Hanging between anonymous flows and an individual desire for a well-being together, the following series of triptychs brings photographs taken in the subways of New York City, USA, and Toronto, Canada. The text, inspired by Don DeLillo’s novel “Underworld”, is printed on argentic photographic paper. Gradually darkening over time, it is reproduced below.
The subway seals you durably in the spur of the moment, a chamber of echoes, a heartbeat under earth. The train was one of his, every car tagged with his own neon zoom, letters like ghosts spelling out a claim to motion. He liked the harsh noise the subway trains make, a roar that was like the sound of history itself, grinding, endless, alive. You saw the lives passing in the windows, dark faces in flashes of light, each a story written and erased in seconds. Above, he felt the city moving like a shadow, its pulse faint but constant, as if the streets themselves were breathing. In that underground world, he was lost, suspended between motion and memory.
Photo prints: 42 x 27 cm (17 x 11 in), Text print: proportionally