Holding on for life or death

The year is 1979 and the New York subway is a shambles. It is dangerous, sleazy, and dirty. There is no air conditioning and the heat is oppressive in summer. Passengers are likely to sit on wet spray paint if they manage to find an safe seat at all. Eye contact is to be avoided at all costs. Talking to strangers is not an option. Muggings are taken for granted. For many of those that travel on the subway there is no choice, this is how to get to work, go across town, or take the kids to Coney Island on a hot summer's day.

It is into this environment that the camera wielding Bruce Davidson descended each day for two years, wanting "to transform the subway from its dark, degrading and impersonal reality into the images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day".

The Guardian Angels on patrol

Published in 1984, Subway was Davidson's first major foray into colour photography. Nearing 50 at the time, Davidson was experienced in photographing volatile environments and diffusing explosive situations. In the early 1960s he was allowed an inside pass to photograph the notorious Brooklyn ganglands. In the early 1970s he immersed himself into life on east 100th st in Harlem. There is always a deep personal connection and societal context to Davidson's projects. This earnestness assists in photographing under the surface at the cost of an occassional scrap with danger. Unlike those previous projects, here Davidson had to create trust between photographer and subject in seconds, not days or weeks. "I decided that I would take the offensive and become the hunter", he explains. Dressed in almost military style streetwear, a couple of cameras, several lenses, and a powerful strobe were his weapons.

Photography of mass transit passengers has a long heritage. In the late 1930s, Walker Evans traversed the subway taking photos from a camera hidden under his coat. The subjects of his candid shots were the "men and women of the jury". Most recently, Tom Wood's Bus Odyssey elevates his fellow passengers into an inetgral part of the photographic process, as if the are inside Wood's viewfinder choosing his shots. Martin Parr's flippant Japonais Endormis throws the stereotype of stern Japanese businessmen out the window. New York authorities have made several attempts to block public photography on the subway in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Photo bloggers successfully summoned the ghost of Evans to lend weight to overturning the decision.

80s fashion in all its splendour

Shooting with extremely wide angle and fast lenses (17mm, 24mm), most of the shots were taken just 12-16 inches from the subjects. The effect is intimate portraits with cinematic composition, with such short focal lengths focusing is less of an issue. More often than not, Davidson would approach the subjects and ask permission, showing them the photos he had already taken on the project, and promising to send them a print. If permission was granted, he would ask them to be as they were. He tells a story of a man with a deep scar gouged across his face, "If you take my picture I will break your camera", said the youth. Upon viewing the prints that Davidson carried about, the youth now ordered "Take my picture". The result is one of the best photographs in the book.

The conductor - "BRAIN" of the train

The photographs show grimy carriages often lit by a luridly dressed passenger, as if they were trying to compensate for the drabness. Davidson noticed that the colour over the time, as seen under fluorescent lighting was iridescent, "like fish". There is an strong wave of sensuality throughout. Hot sweaty bodies are crammed in these metal cans, bumping and jostling down the length of New York. There is glistening skin in many of the shots, strangers getting far closer to one another than they would permit on the surface.

Graffiti or make-up? You decide.

As any current day New York subway traveller would attest, this underworld appears at first alien and confrontational but soon subsumes its passengers in the comfort of routine. There is a realisation that an unspoken comeraderie exists over the facade of the every man for himself posturing. These are fellow New Yorkers in much the same situation as one another. Rapid judgments can now be accurately made on the relative dangers of sitting on that seat, or against that pole, or where to stand on the platform, or whether to take the express or local train.

The foreign scrawls of graffiti that were the landscape of the subway gradually became rudimentarily legible to Davidson after some time. Fred Brathwaite, a.k.a. the graffiti artist FAB 5 FREDDY, wrote the introduction to the 2003 re-issue of the book. He writes that "you can feel the temperature, the texture, the mood, and the attitude in these pictures".

Children on the way to Coney Island

Speaking in an interview with the New York Times on the occasion of the centenary of the subway system, Davidson identified in retrospect that the train was a metaphor, shuttling through time and space. Two decades later the trains have been sterilised of any character. There is no graffiti, far less danger, and all cars are now graced with air conditioning. Some things, however, do not change. The advertisements on the walls still sell improbable dreams of Carribean beaches, age defying lotions, and soda that must be bought if you want to Enjoy Life. The most fascinating realisation is that the people are the same. The man with the six inch wide paisley tie, the mullet haired graffiti tagger, the surly businessmen, the excited children heading to Coney Island. All the characters in the book are now 25 years older, many of them anonymously hurtling under the streets on New York each day. It is in part because of Bruce Davidson's legacy that we credit our fellow passengers with respect, wonder, and kinship.

Front cover of dustjacket

Buy Bruce Davidson's Subway

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