underground encounters:

gallery and text below:

descend,      flow,      merge,      glance,     dread,    yearn,      yearn rouge

“Underground  encounters” is an open visual file,  a work in progress that extends over several  years and started in 1973, in Paris.  The selection presented  here comprises a few summary sentences,   a few verses,   of that longer narrative.  The photographs have all been taken in the  Paris subway,  le metro,  an awe-inspiring underground structure of tunnels, stairs, escalators, and mechanized walks, that epitomize mass transit
technology.  Its tubular subterranean nature resembles a giant sewer system  where the flowing waste is, in fact, us, depersonalized humans in purgatorial transit.  Metaphorically, descending into the depths of the metro is like
crossing the threshold between  inner and outer human experience.  These are fragments of that  crossing.

“... en todo caso, había un solo túnel,  oscuro y solitario: el mío.”

“... in any case, there was only one tunnel, dark  and solitary: mine.” (E. Sabato, The Tunnel)

all images copyright © enrique manchon 2013