Street Photography in subway

With different "rules of engagement" there is the photography we take on the subway…

Each city has different rules and while some administrations allow photographing on the subway, others expressly forbid it. But there is not only this particularity of photographing in the subway: the game also changes in terms of technique and therefore also of approach.

It’s 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 […]

I feel that there was a passion and a purpose to photographing in the subway. We were all in the same boat and I was just expressing the everyday occurrences in the subway at that point in 1980. It’s a different subway, although you still have to watch your back.

Bruce Davidson about photographing in the subway

If for the canonical street photography we refer to the work of Garry Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz for photos on the subway certainly the work of Bruce Davidson is the main reference. And so far the respect also for others who have done this type of work, like Richard Sandler and Martha Cooper, moreover in a masterly way the kinf of subway street photography is still Bruce Davidson. Any work we can do in the metro will inevitably always be conditioned by that work which is part of history.

I am not a great subway photographer, I've never seriously dedicated myself to it. Also because it is forbidden in the Mexico City metro. However, I do a few shots every now and then and what you see are the most recent photos.

If you are a photographer shooting in the subway i would like to know more about your work in that particular place. Maybe we canthink a feature here. Just drop me an email sharing your work.