A Photographic Journey Through the London Underground by Elke Rollmann

Author:Elke Rollmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHOTOGRAPHY / Subject & Themes / Architectural and cultural
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2021-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

St. Paul’s

Green Park

Regent’s Park

Liverpool Street

North Greenwich

Liverpool Street

King’s Cross

Hampstead Heath

Whitechapel

PEOPLE

People take the Tube because it is a practical way to get around, and not in order to socialise while they travel. Regular travellers spend many hours there each week in the company of people they don’t know. You can travel the same route from Monday to Friday, yet there will only ever be a few – if any – familiar faces around you. During the rush hour, all these people can be very close to you. But it is unlikely that you will ever talk to any of them.

Experienced Tube travellers simply ignore their fellow commuters. We have no genetic program for dealing with strangers in large numbers – so large that they can be frightening. On a crowded train we look at people’s shoes, we look at their ears, we look at their hair, but rarely do we look into their eyes.

There are various kinds of traveller. The regular commuter is a practised sleepwalker, cocooned in a cosy routine and powered by absent-mindedness. Whenever the train pulls into a station, this traveller either glances up or doesn’t look at all, knowing automatically when to get off. Attention is dedicated to the smartphone, the newspaper or the book; or maybe he or she just sits there, with eyes closed.

Then there are the strangers, also known as tourists. Their tendency to obstruct platforms by crowding around whoever is holding the Underground map has become part of London’s urban mythology. They are the ones who, whenever a train pulls into a station, crane their necks to read its destination. They always seem to be anxious, as if archaic fears of underground travelling are creeping inside them. Might I get lost here? Am I going to miss the station? Where is my wallet?

Finally, there are the ‘unpleasant’ passengers, who have a number of different strategies at their disposal to annoy you: talking loudly and often very self-confidently on their mobiles (about trivial banalities or things you really don’t want to know); eating smelly food (the doner kebab with garlic sauce being top of the league); babbling incoherently or hurling abuse at other passengers (for the fun of it); blocking half the carriage with oversize baggage or several shopping bags; taking up a large amount of space at your expense (‘manspreading’ being the classic in this context) or coughing and sneezing in a way that ensures a maximum viral spread.

In the age of global warming, there has been a shift in the public perception of the Tube traveller. Back in the old days, somewhere in the seventies and eighties, when the Underground was quite gritty here and there, you would talk about the people who had to take the Tube every day as if you felt a little sorry for them. Perhaps they couldn’t afford a car. Nowadays, taking the Tube is an environmentally friendly thing to do, which adds a certain dose of coolness to the whole procedure. And, of course, the Underground is much shinier nowadays … and its logo is a design classic all over the world.

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