Stories From The Underground is a photo series that I have been working on for the last three years. My fascination with the subway and its riders stems from the notion that for a brief time, a community is created by virtue of a single shared purpose: people want to get where they’re going and they want to get there and out of the concrete labyrinth as soon as possible, and as uneventfully as possible.
Riding the subway is an inherently contradictory experience. You insert yourself into a highly public, mostly crowded environment and immediately retreat into the privacy of your own interior world. I like to think of it as “being alone together.”
Public transportation equalizes the human experience: successful business person and homeless person, teacher and student, rich and poor, all occupy the same confined space for hours each week. Unruly riders elicit furtive glances and shared exchanges of rolled eyes before everyone settles back into their interior space.
The community has an unwritten code of conduct – avoid eye contact and respect personal space as much as possible, even when the train is crowded. Many riders are focused on their phones, reading, or listening to music, while others engage in conversations.
Most importantly, each rider has their own story to tell and this is what my photos are attempting to capture. I seek to capture the essence of a moment, freezing it in time. The goal is to invite the viewer to look at a photograph, whether of two people in conversation, a man holding a bouquet of flowers, or someone resting their head on their companion’s shoulder, and to create a narrative of their choosing to define the moment.
Eli Beldick was born in Richmond, VA in 2000. He received his diploma in Video Design and Production from George Brown College in 2022. He is currently enrolled in the Photography Media Arts program at Toronto Metropolitan University where he has been exploring different styles of photography including street photography, portraits, and miniature photography. He has also started to explore the world of 2D animation. Ever since he can remember, he has been interested in all things creative. In his final years in high school, he started creating short films for his YouTube page. Although he studied video production, he has discovered that he derives much more satisfaction from capturing moments in time – of people going about their daily lives, elements of nature, and city scenes.