METROPOLITAN LIVES

Subways are a railway system in which electric trains travel along passages below ground transporting thousand of people every day. Subway becomes the nerve centre of the metropolis and at the same time a crossing zone. Inside it, empty gazes, momentary stares, worried faces, lost expressions. Walker Evans defined them as naked faces, when he shot the subway passengers in 1940.
Thirty-nine years later, in the peak of the financial crisis, Reinier Gerritsen photographed people in the New York subway between Wall Street and Grand Central Station.

5.04pm 09.06.09

It's wonderful to take a look at each individual and discover the innumerable feelings all doing the same action: waiting. Gerritsen assembles his photos from a number of shots that he takes within a few seconds avoiding to be seen. This collection has been exposed in the Netherlands Fotomuseum and also published in a book call Wall street stop .