All images © Sirui Ma
In Subway Portraits, the Beijing-born, London-based photographer turns her lens towards some of New York’s most overlooked yet essential workers
With over a decade of experience in photography, much of Ma’s work is deeply rooted in curiosity, often informed by fleeting encounters and moments that go unnoticed, “I really love talking to strangers and hearing different people’s stories,” she shares. “A lot of my work is highlighting and championing the everyday hero.” Just earlier this year, Ma presented her first solo exhibition in East London. Titled Little Things Mean a Lot, the exhibition touched on Ma’s ethos of finding beauty in the mundane, capturing intimate, gentle moments of joy amongst women of Asian descent – Ma’s friends.
Intrigued by the role of MTA conductors, Ma contemplated this project for some time before plucking up the courage to approach the conductors in New York last summer. Capturing the humanity of the people who keep New York moving, the book serves as a love letter to the city that raised her. Questioning her choice of subject, she explains, “You always see them in their own little cubicle by themselves. It feels like a mysterious, solitary position to be in all day, in darkness by yourself.” Ma considers how moving away from New York deepened her connection to the city. Now, it’s often a subject that shapes her work. The project serves as a reflection of her relationship with the city, with the hope to underscore the importance of appreciating the under-appreciated. “We take them for granted and only notice them when something is wrong,” she emphasises, “and that shouldn’t be the case.”
“I wrote my name, email, website and Instagram down maybe 100 times and cut it up into little fortune cookie sizes slips to give after the spiel so that they could get the image back”
Reflecting on the process of documentation, Ma recalls how she took her camera and flash to a station one morning, positioning herself strategically in the centre of the platform where the train carriage stops. Stationing herself for a few hours, Ma seized every opportunity to speak to the conductors. “I had to find a spiel because they stopped for such a brief amount of time,” she recalls. As the day progressed, her confidence grew despite facing a rejection rate of around 60 per cent. “I didn’t take it personally,” she admits, “I was like, you know what, these people are working, they don’t necessarily want to be so public facing and seen in this way. If I put myself in their shoes, I’d probably say no too”. For Ma, the experience served as a reminder to prioritise the comfort and boundaries of her subjects while shooting.
After gathering enough images, Ma relocated to another station to repeat the process. Following lunch, it dawned on her that the conductors had no way of knowing who she was or how to get in touch with her. “I wrote my name, email, website and Instagram down maybe 100 times and cut it up into little fortune cookie sizes slips to give after the spiel so that they could get the image back.” Over the course of a day, Ma captured around 60-70 conductors on ten rolls of film, at four different stations that were personal to her experiences in New York.
Ma then brought on close friend and designer Eli Rosenbloom to help edit and design the book. “After discussing, we decided to enrich the book with more life so we added more text, artwork and iPhone pictures,” she tells me. Alongside a personal archive of subway-related imagery, including humourous sub-collections like ‘small injuries’, ‘people who look like characters’ and ‘dogs on the subway’, the book features an interview between Ma and one of the conductors, Kyata Collins. “She really gave me a deeper understanding of what they do. She’s only two years older than me but it’s hard for me to picture someone my age doing a job like that. It’s such a different world from what we do.” Kyata’s interview offers a broad insight into the perspective of conductors, illustrating just some of the challenges they face and complications they overcome each day.
Over a nine-month period, Ma and Eli worked closely to refine the book, collaborating with Eli’s team and contributors including artist Leon Xu, writers Hua Hsu and Raquel Silver. Discussing how a personal project almost always feels never-ending, Ma acknowledges the difficulty of knowing when to stop and letting go of perfection. Launched in New York just last week, the result is a 208-page, multimedia love letter to the city and its unsung heroes.
