Robert Gerhardt

Everyday during rush hours, millions of people stream down into New York City's subway system in order to travel between home and work, or work and home. 

The time that one spends underground is time spent in a state of purgatory: neither here nor there and completely cut off from the world on the streets above. Day and night the light in the trains, on the platforms, and in the stations never changes. There is no e-mail, no radio and no cell phones. One is completely alone in a relatively small space that is packed with so many others. People retreat into themselves as they ride along; they sleep, read, listen to music or simply withdraw into their own thoughts as a way to distance themselves from the crush of bodies around them.

But if one takes the time to look around the cars, you realize very quickly that the subway is also the melting pot of the city. People from all walks of life ride the same crowded trains together, regardless of wealth, race, religion or creed. They are a cross section of the New York City population. And the subway is the one place in the city where you can see all of these people from such different walks of life in such close and confined quarters with each other.

It is this cross section of humanity that compelled me to make photographs of my fellow riders during my daily commutes to and from work; to capture a moment in the life of another as we travel along together. They are simple moments in a place between coming and going. But they are moments that we all share together.