BUS SCENES: Visualizing Commuter Culture
36 images Created 31 Jan 2021
Through the "Bus Scenes" images, I visually explored commuter culture on Austin's Capital Metro public transit system. This involved observing the ebb and flow of the bus, using only an iPhone, as people filed on and off — a swath of humanity presenting itself in a fresh and unobstructed manner. Before me, individuals from varying levels of the socio-economic hierarchy coalesced in the bounded spaces of the bus stop and the bus.
As a new Austin resident, the bus formed a basis for my introduction to the city and its residents, seeing people starting and ending their days in the communal space the bus provides. In most cases, interpersonal connections were in absentia as everyone made their own way in their own world in a shared space, rolling along a systematic route.
Most everything on the bus, no matter how strange or out of place, became normalized as the individual commuter remained within their space, with their headphones and screens acting either as shields or distractions, depending on the moment. Within this essay, modeled after the work of documentary and street photographers such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, and Helen Levitt, with photojournalistic tendencies, I translated my encounters through the visual, finding moments that derived personal meaning within a common space and bringing them together.
The work exists in a pre-Covidian space, when social distancing and masks were not part of everyday conversation and would have significantly altered any potential images after March 13, 2020, the day my commuting ended. Abruptly, the work concludes with my final bus ride making photographs on March 4 — before the shutdown and classes went virtual. It is a glimpse into a commuting culture that may never be the same.
All the photographs are with an iPhone while commuting on the Capital Metro bus system.
As a new Austin resident, the bus formed a basis for my introduction to the city and its residents, seeing people starting and ending their days in the communal space the bus provides. In most cases, interpersonal connections were in absentia as everyone made their own way in their own world in a shared space, rolling along a systematic route.
Most everything on the bus, no matter how strange or out of place, became normalized as the individual commuter remained within their space, with their headphones and screens acting either as shields or distractions, depending on the moment. Within this essay, modeled after the work of documentary and street photographers such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, and Helen Levitt, with photojournalistic tendencies, I translated my encounters through the visual, finding moments that derived personal meaning within a common space and bringing them together.
The work exists in a pre-Covidian space, when social distancing and masks were not part of everyday conversation and would have significantly altered any potential images after March 13, 2020, the day my commuting ended. Abruptly, the work concludes with my final bus ride making photographs on March 4 — before the shutdown and classes went virtual. It is a glimpse into a commuting culture that may never be the same.
All the photographs are with an iPhone while commuting on the Capital Metro bus system.
