Public transportation is a curious affair, forcing strangers into close, if not intimate proximity with one another during all times of the day and night. For those who commute, doing this twice a day, five days a week, endless weeks a year, through rain, sleet, snow, or heatwaves, in sickness and in health—we adapt ourselves accordingly. We tend to mask our inner most selves and do our best be somewhat discreet, yet the truth will always out: many times its written all over our face.
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In New York, there are unwritten rules—or at least here used to be. Don’t make eye contact. Be polite. Don’t entertain insanity. There was a time when you’d tuck in your necklace and turn your rings around before you got on the train—but things done changed. Nowadays, the trains are infinitely safer and smoother rides: but one thing remains the same and that’s how much you might discover looking and listening to strangers going about their business.
Photographer Stan Raucher has been documenting metro systems around the world for the past eight years, raveling to New York, Mexico City, San Francisco, Budapest, Paris, Naples, London, Rome, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, São Paulo, Lima, Delhi, and Shanghai for Metro: Scenes from an Urban Stage (Daylight Books). Camera at the ready, Raucher photographs the scenes of everyday life that happen quietly; there is none of the drama and madness that can make riding the train in certain areas and at certain times a nerve wracking affair.
Instead, Raucher gives us scenes from a subdued life, almost as though the suburbs came to the city and brought their pleasantries along. There are countless couples engaged in sharing a private moment in a highly public world. There are families and friends traveling together, on their way to or from. There are scenes of exquisite cuteness like a puppy being fed from a baby bottle or a family joyously partaking in popsicles.
In Raucher’s photographs, the train is a peaceful place where people express equal parts curiosity and tolerance. It’s a bit utopian in its view of the world, a place where despite all of our difference, it’s possible to get along. It is a celebration of the most quotidian aspects of life, the moments where nothing really seems to be happening, like the spaces between the words.
But that’s what holds it all together: the moments that are so common and that we move through them without necessarily being fully present to their impact or import. In contrast to the dramatic flashes that punctuate life, Raucher’s photographs offer a space to breathe, to unwind, and to relax. They are a tribute to the slice of life that we are so quick to forget.
The book opens with a quote from Walker Evans, who observed, “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” Raucher takes these words to heart and he gives us a piece of himself, the part that finds pleasure and solace in the simple act of being at home in the world.
All photos: ©Stan Raucher, courtesy of Daylight Books.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
