The Subway Man
This is a photo I shot and redesigned in one of the subway stations in Istanbul, Turkey.
Subway stations are very inspiring places to me. I see them full of meanings of: the waiting for something to come, the tiredness, the tinge of misery that floats over the people faces, the boredom, the struggle with life and above all, the departure.
Among many of other pictures I photographed depicting the subway life. This one still continuously inspire me with more meanings. As we see, a man standing alone in the middle of the day waiting for the subway with his bending neck that depicts his boredom and the absence of any source of vitality, which is something not expected to see at least in that midday time as the sun exposure tells us. Ironically with his bending neck, we see the man standing with a very straight back, despite of all the empty seats behind him. That's something I often observed in crowded city. There is a kind of unconscious feeling that there is no time to sit, the rhythm of life keeps you always in the attitude of rush.
Then comes the bad game of time, and that what I tried to present with the symmetry of the picture. The man keeps waiting, for the subway, -for things to come-, and while everything in the scene seems to keep the same, the only thing that runs, is Time. The time that appears as a halter hanging from the clock and surrounds his neck. The trap of time that surrounds the necks of all of us.
Standing in the opposite side to himself with back to back posture, depicts disturbances in his psychological status, trying to ignore and escape his inner self and can't achieve self harmony, while in the middle of that, the sun gives a chance for his shadows to osculate, leaving a space for making peace.
As you flip the picture 180 degrees, it shows its meanings with a totally different perspective. It's now a House. The house is the whole world, and again, the time difference is the base of that house, it is what's keeping the house still and stable. If we cut the time lines, the house will fall apart. And we, humans, are floating in the middle.
