16th Century Tube Passengers

One morning in 2016, I was sitting amongst a million or so other commuters on a mundane tube journey into central London, when I looked up to see a lady dressed in a velvet hood, seated in a classical, timeless pose. She was in a beautifully serene world of her own, far away from the noise of it all. Immediately, a 16th-century Flemish painting came to mind. I looked around and found I couldn’t see anything else but people held in their own Renaissance-like, personal moments. Beautiful Caravaggio or Vermeer-like images of regular and everyday people, that at a glance could easily be mistaken for portraits grand enough to grace the walls of any fine stately home. So, commute by commute, I began to surreptitiously collect these commuters while adhering to three simple rules: the photographs had to be taken on my phone, and they had to be retouched on my phone, then posted to social media during that commute. Strangely, the London tube is quite a perfect setting for a 16th-century Renaissance portrait. Bathed in a single, harsh light source from above, many of these everyday commuters find themselves naturally sitting with their hands folded on their knees. And whether they’re looking up to read an advert for a flakey health supplement or home insurance, or gazing down at their smartphone like it were some treasured book of prayers, they’re captured in that classical, wistful, timeless pose.