Soul train: An eight-year ride on the New York subway

Swiss photographer Willy Spiller was spellbound when he first saw the ‘great human menagerie’ in 1977. His dazzling images are now a time capsule for a lost, thrilling and dangerous world

@mlestone
Main image: ‘He shot the beginnings of stories whose ends he left to our imaginations’ … Elevated Station 180th St, Queens, New York, 1982. Photograph: Willy Spiller

  • Catching the Light, 1984

    Spiller arrived in New York in 1977 and was thrilled to encounter the city subway. He spent the next eight years chronicling its daily scenes. All photographs: Willy Spiller. A new edition of a book collecting these photos, Hell on Wheels – New York Subway 1977-1984 (Edition Bildhalle), is out now, and an accompanying exhibition runs at Bildhalle Zurich until 20 May

  • A Train to Brighton Beach, 1977

    ‘As a photojournalist,’ says Spiller, ‘there were shots I was determined to capture, but there were many others that just fell into my lap.’

  • Downtown Express 72nd St Station, West Side IRT, 1977

    ‘Forever a lover of fairytales,’ Spiller adds. ‘I was always enthralled when I plunged into that rattling world of these mobile metal living rooms, like Alice in Wonderland – never knowing whether the next moment would be threatening, violent, funny, frightening or delightful. Here I could blithely observe and capture the vast human menagerie of the metropolis.’

  • Conductor Between Subway Cars

    ‘The New York subway of the 1970s and 80s was sometimes referred to as Hell on Wheels. To me, this conjures images of a steel prison, rattling through the underworld’s eternal darkness. But I’d never before felt such freedom.’

  • Grand Central, 1983

    ‘For the American photographer, all this was normal. For me, everything down there was completely crazy.’

  • Sunny Stop, 1982

    ‘People randomly crammed together for the length of a ride appeared to ignore all differences: status, culture, ethnicity, religion, gender and age.’

  • Getting to the Office, Grand Central Station, 1983

    ‘They seemed equally exposed and uninhibited, as if they’d checked in their private lives above ground – and were curiously indifferent to me and my camera.’

  • Best Friend, 1983

    Bill Shapiro, former editor-in-chief of Life magazine, wrote an essay titled Evidence of an Era, which forms the introduction to Hell on Wheels. ‘He shot cops and robbers,’ Shapiro writes. ‘He shot the fashionable and the indigent, commuters and kids. He shot the unpredictable dance of strangers interacting in tin-can train cars.’

  • Dangerous Ride, Boy Clinging Outside a Subway Car, 1978

    ‘He shot the beginnings of stories whose ends he left to our imaginations,’ continues Shapiro. ‘Film was expensive so he chose his moments carefully.’

  • On the Beat, Police Control, 72nd St Station West Side IRT Line, 1977

    ‘When Hell on Wheels was first published, it was met with a grim, crime-scene fascination,’ Shapiro’s essay goes on. ‘Focusing on the lurking danger and rampant crime in New York’s subways – which, the book notes, averaged about 250 incidents a week during the worst years – it also noted Spiller’s bravery for even setting foot in what was perceived as a rolling cage battle.’

  • Being Squeezed, Rush Hour on Lexington IRT

    ‘Each car is a sweaty, rattling microcosm of the city itself – a loud, crowded, colourful melting pot where everyone is thrust into everyone else’s business.’

  • Jerome Avenue IRT Line, 1980

    Shapiro’s essay continues: ‘Today, more than a generation after Spiller took his last subway snap, the “Wildstyle” graffiti that felt so threatening to white people in the 1970s is gone, the train lights no longer flicker then go dark, and the cars themselves are actually sort of clean-ish.’

  • Popcorn and Candy Subway, 1978

    ‘Stepping back, we spot evidence of a time when the city felt more quirky, individualistic and unpredictable-in-a-good-way, more like a misfit circus than the gleaming result of a corporate focus group that Manhattan has become, with a Starbucks, Chase bank and Walgreens on every corner. Spiller’s photos speak of long-gone artefacts: newspapers (replaced by iPhones) and boom boxes (replaced by ear buds). He reminds us that, below the street, you could buy popcorn and “freshly squeezed” orange juice or play a shooting-style arcade game while waiting for your ride.’

  • Ghettoblaster Man Waiting, 72nd St Station West Side IRT Line, 1977

    ‘The pictures are the same,’ says Spiller. ‘They don‘t tell you what you have to feel. It’s New York that’s changed,’ writes Shapiro.

  • Summer in Queens, 1983

    ‘While a photo freezes an instant in time, we can only approach that image from the moment we’re in now.’

Topics