Subway Portraits
Many of us use the DC Subway system as a utility. It takes us to work. Period. I commuted on the subway for 14 years and know it well from that point of view. The architectural style is called “Brutalist” and for a good reason. At first glance it’s all gray concrete and flat lighting. We maintain a polite social distance and seldom sense any connection with people in the subway. But there is more, much much more. Let me show you how I see it…
My inspirations draw on the works of Arnold Newman and others. For me, its all about the PEOPLE, in all of their glory, riding the subway, waiting for trains, doing the expected, doing the unexpected, and just being themselves in apparently simple but unexpectedly complex spaces with architecture, with light and with shadows. I enjoy the contrast between the natural forms of people and the high vaulted, brutalist architectural spaces that are pieced through by the clean linear mechanical engineering of the trains. Each one is perfect in its own way and each one’s character shows best in juxtaposition.
John St. Hilaire
May 2020
