Underground

In 1992 my daily commutes on the New York City subway became a photographic obsession. I was soon traveling underground, camera in hand, with no fixed destination but images. Aware that many photographers had been there before, I felt I understood why: that endless parade of people offered by a subway ride is a powerful temptation for the voyeur lurking inside every photographer. It has lured me to spend hours hidden from the sun within the underground transportation systems of New York, Caracas, London and Mexico City. Using the subway without a camera has become a painful experience, as a fascinating movie fades before my eyes with each passing second. Going down for the first time into the underground stations of Mexico City ignited a familiar feeling, that of joining the city's pulse and becoming one of its own. With each passenger travels a story, an attitude, a social imprint, a mood, a book, there for an instant, gone the next, always on route to an unknown destination. I watch and listen, construe and imagine. I hunt for snippets of an endless story. This sequence of images was shot on 35mm B&W film and published as a photo essay by Quinta Real magazine in 2008.