An ode to the people who make New York’s subway run, Sirui Ma’s new photo book is a loving document of public life
The daily commute is something most people loathe; there are the long waits, cancelled trains, incessant noise, the crush of people packed together like sardines, and often, the threat of harassment. But look closer, and public life has proved to be a rich arena for photographers, writers and artists to explore; there’s Hiro’s indelible image of commuters in rush hour at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo (1962) – a moment of beauty amidst the madness – Keith Haring’s guerilla subway murals in the 1980s, and Lauren Elkin’s book No. 91/92: diary of a year on the bus (2021), where the author used her daily bus commute in Paris to write down everything that caught her eye via her iPhone. Today, comedian Kareem Rahma even hosts a popular TikTok series called Subway Takes, where he interviews people – including celebrities – about their most controversial opinions as they ride the subway in New York. These artists transform the mundanity of public life into something poetic, making us see the commute anew through fresh eyes.
Sirui Ma’s new photo book, Subway Portraits, is the latest addition to the canon of art made on this topic. Now based in London but originally hailing from Queens, New York, Ma’s latest project was initially born from a sense of nostalgia for home, alongside a curiosity about the train conductors, who are often hidden in plain sight. “I grew up in Queens, taking the subway, and whenever I would see a subway conductor, I would wave to them because I feel I’ve always had this perception that they have this really solitary job,” she says. “They’re just in this cubicle by themselves.”
Shot over a single day on 2 June 2023, the book features 64 meticulously hand-printed portraits of New York City MTA train conductors peering out of the windows. Despite their uniforms, each of Ma’s subjects has a palpable sense of originality and character, having accessorised their outfits with different hairstyles, goggles, gloves and earplugs. The portraits on the front and back cover of the book are given a surreal edge with the edition of an 0-band wraparound jacket of a hallucinatory, hazy painting of a subway tunnel by artist Leon Xu, a friend of Ma’s, transforming the mundane into the transcendental.
“For people who live in big cities, the subway is such a big part of our lives, but we overlook it,” says Ma. “We spend so much time commuting from A to B, it feels like it’s some kind of limbo state, but actually, a lot of things happen on the subway. Every person who’s taken the subway in New York has experienced something crazy. Public transport is such a uniquely urban experience.”
As a photographer working in the realm of portraiture and fashion – Ma’s last project, Little Things Mean a Lot, captured women from the Asian diaspora in London in a delicate, sensual style – Subway Portraits is a departure from her previous work. “When Sirui first showed me the series, I found it to be discomforting,” says Eli Rosenbloom, the book’s editor and designer (he is also the founder of New Reader, a digital library featuring interviews with the likes of Hans Ulrich Obrist and Elise By Olsen). “They were nothing like her other photos – they did not contain a formal serenity and beauty that I had seen in most of her previous work. But this project is at the source of her roots, in Queens. These portraits feel deeply tied to the essence of who she is and how she sees the world.” Of her own practice, Ma simply says, “I like to capture everyday people and daily life, but I want to always portray things through a lens that feels relatable and real.”
The latter half of the book features a short text by Hua Hsu – a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Stay True – on his own experience of the New York subway commute, alongside more of Ma’s photos, taken over the past 12 years on her iPhone, capturing public life on the subway. An interview between Ma and a train conductor about her own experience on the job covers the more harrowing aspects of a life spent on the subway, like death and violence.
“Kyata Collins, the train conductor I spoke to, spoke about the amount of mental illness and addiction that you can see in the subway system,” says Ma. “Especially in New York now, on the public transport system and overall, social welfare has decreased so much after the pandemic. I want to bring awareness to that, and remind people of the very human elements of the subway. I do feel like, in a couple of years, there will no longer be train conductors. So I wanted to capture this moment in time.”
Subway Portraits by Sirui Ma is self-published, and is out now.
