Rush Hour in Colour

The morning and evening commute are part of many workers’ lives.

I have lived near and been a traveller on the London Metropolitan line nearly all my life.

I’m so familiar with the muffled announcements from the station PA systems, the noise of brakes squealing on the metal rails in summer and the rumble of the trains.

As a freelancer, I wasn’t familiar with travel in the rush hour. I avoided it if I could, so for this project, I set out to experience this part of daily life for myself.

In this series I have tried to give a sense of my experience.

I like using colour and I was dissatisfied with the largely monotone images I was capturing until I found a way of reflecting the scenes in a colour saturated surface. The resulting images are exactly as shot and haven’t been manipulated.

I noticed many people tried to block out the journey by wearing headphones or using devices. They seem to do the journey on automatic pilot immersed in their own worlds.

In crowded trains, people are obliged to stand very close to one another – making it difficult to maintain their personal space. In an impersonal, crowded situation, eye contact tends to be avoided. But details of skin, hair and clothing are brought into very close range.

For some non-commuters, it isn’t a daily occurrence and they can get swept up in the fast-moving lanes of human traffic and disrupt the flow and cause irritation when they don’t know where they are heading.

Every journey brings a new insight and also a slight fear of being observed and thrown out.