Except for a few pictures when I was a kid I started photographing late in life. When I was 31 years old and going on bicycle vacation on the beautiful Swedish island of Gotland my mother demanded to see pictures from there and gave me money for a camera as a birthday gift. The result was a Pentax Espio in July 1995 and when I returned from Gotland with two full 36 picture rolls of film I thought I had overdone it. But things had gotten started and just a year later a one week stay in San Francisco, California, USA, resulted in far more than 200 pictures. Since I have worked quite a bit with web design since 1994 and wanted to be able to use own photographs on the Internet the need for a digital camera gradually grew. The result was a Kodak DC 120 in June 1998. While the small and convenient Espio followed everywhere I went and produced more than 3000 pictures the DC 120 was a bit too clumsy and was only used at planned photo sessions but still produced almost 1700 pictures. Finally the Espio literally disintegrated from wear and the need for a new small, convenient camera became urgent. I decided to score double by buying a small digital camera. In July 2001 a small silver Canon Digital Ixus/Elph 300 arrived to fill the gap after the old cameras and produced more than 400 pictures in just the first few weeks.
As might be understood from the descriptions of my cameras I am no professional photographer with expensive system cameras anf high ambitions but just an amateur who tries to keep photographing fun and simple. Someone once slightly spiteful called me a "picture card photographer" and I believe that is pretty close to the truth. I aim at capturing the prototype as simple as possible and if it doesn't take too much with decent light conditions as well. I don't want to complicate matters any further.
The idea with a photo journey by subway struck me when I was riding two small local trains in Stockholm and shooting some pictures through the train windows. Since I have lived most of my life along the subway line 19 south of Stockholm and it has been something of a red tread in life to me it was a natural choice. The basic idea was simple: To ride between the two terminal stations Hagsätra and Hässelby and photograph each station. It took a little more planning to work out in reality though: The weather had to be decent, it had to be done at a time when not too many other people was moving around and in a way not interfering too much with other passengers, and I had to manage the photograps during the short stop at each station.
The task was undertaken an early Sunday and I choose to ride at the last set of doors in the second last cart of the train in both directions to cover both platform ends and reduce the risk of being overrun by panicking co-passengers aiming for the closest, usually first or last, cart of the train. I was lucky because it was a full length train allowing good coverage of the platform and of an older type permitting temporary blocking of the doors since the 6-10 seconds the doors usually are open is a short time to manage the three views, rear, side and forward, I wanted at each stop. Half a dozen times or so I had to block the doors for a second or two to manage the last shot and was expecting a mouthing from the train driver over the loudspeakers. But things went well and when I met the train driver as we swapped ends of the train at the terminal station in Häselby he just commented I couldn't get any pictures of the station Stora mossen since it was closed for reconstruction so the trains just rolled by it. The entire journey took a bit over two hours and resulted in 204 pictures from 34 stations, and then it took an additional number of hours to prepare the material for web publication, much of that time to script and automate the handling of a vaste picture material.
So, enough gibberish and on to the real thing: the pictures! You can go to a specific station from here or follow the journey from station to station, in either direction. Enjoy! "Train towards Hagsätra or Hässelby strand. Time to depart. All aboard. Watch the doors. The doors close."
Hagsätra -
Rågsved -
Högdalen -
Bandhagen -
Stureby -
Svedmyra -
Sockenplan -
Enskede gård -
Globen -
Gullmarsplan -
Skanstull -
Medborgarplatsen -
Slussen -
Gamla stan -
T-Centralen -
Hötorget -
Rådmansgatan -
Odenplan -
S:t Eriksplan -
Fridhemsplan -
Thorildsplan -
Kristineberg -
Alvik -
Stora mossen -
Abrahamsberg -
Brommaplan -
Åkeshov -
Ängbyplan -
Islandstorget -
Blackeberg -
Råcksta -
Vällingby -
Johannelund -
Hässelby gård -
Hässelby strand