Is the city still a dream? - PBF03 / Natan Dvir
16 November to 20 December 2018
Based in New York, Natan Dvir uses the subway tunnels as a living photographic studio, a vantage point from which he observes what is ‘human’ in the city.
Platforms is a series exploring New York’s unique underground architecture and the people who flicker across it. The subway platform viewed by someone waiting on the platform opposite presents a ‘voyeuristic’ experience dissected geometrically by the architecture of the space. The ever-present pillars of the subway are a visual nod to the frames on film stock, organising the space into a sequence of stories. The platform becomes a stage on which the ‘actors’ take their temporary places until the train arrives and makes way for the next ‘act’. The images in this series illustrate the nuances of a self-inflicted isolation in a mega-city, which is furthermore dense and chaotic. The interactions, or the lack of interactions, become manifest in the body language and the spatial location of the commuters being observed. The series reflects the detachment, the separation, the personal spaces, the individualism, the solitude, and the momentary connections in the underground recesses of an urban metropolis.
