Commute

Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur was a passionate spectator who rejoiced in his anonimity, strolling the Parisian boulevards with endless time on his hands. He did not, however, have to catch the 06:42 to Brighton.

Commute brings the detachment of the urban stroller into the decidedly unromantic reality of modern transit. Georg Simmel noticed over a century ago that buses and trains had created something new: strangers obliged to look at one another for long stretches without speaking. The commute repeats that arrangement with a striking regularity. We cram into small metal boxes with strangers and agree to look anywhere but at each other.

I broke the agreement, by looking through the person. Shot quietly on a phone through condensation, scuffed plastic windows and dirty carriages, these photographs find passengers in their reflections, layered over passing infrastructure, advertising and grey dawn light. The portraits are distorted and uninvited, and I am as much a passenger as anyone. Commute records the strange, shared suspension of everyday travel: a quiet, low-lit theatre where everyone is together, entirely alone, and wishing they were somewhere else.