Hungarian artist Adam Magyar had a great idea: capture normal life in a train station with a “high-speed quality control camera used in mass production for capturing fast-moving objects”. The results are extraordinarily beautiful, turning the purely mundane into a magical moment.
We have featured Magyar’s work before, but this is his best by far. Called Stainless, it includes both videos like the above and incredibly detailed still images of entire train cars. Zooming into the latter and watching all those anonymous people is wonderful and strangely soothing, at least for a people-watcher like me. As Adam explains:
Subway networks are the arteries of a city with people flowing by in them, getting ready to release their energy in brining their city to life. Through these temporary groups of passengers brought together by change into the same carriage, I wonder at our transiency, see people immersed in their thoughts, but avoiding to reveal anything about themselves, remaining stainless to be curious eyes. The subways seem just as stainless as their passengers.
The images were captured at the Alexanderplatz underground train station in Berlin, where Adam now lives. They include three arrivals to the station from one of the cars. Each arrival is about 12 seconds stretched to eight minutes each with the high-speed camera.
His silver gelatin subway photographs are now showcased at the Faur Zsófi Gallery in Budapest, Hungary. If you are around there, you can’t miss it. [Adam Magyar]