Hasta La Ideas

The last thing some of us urbanites might want is someone getting a close-up of our face while we’re waiting (most likely impatiently) for a train home in rush hour crowds. But that’s exactly what Adam Magyar is doing with his series “Stainless”—and he’s making us all (collectively) look artsy and awesome through slow-motion ‘portraits’ of public transit platforms.

Side-by-side is a trip (apologies to Magyar for the cheap thrill)

Those are excerpts of Magyar’s footage of Alexanderplatz in Berlin and 42nd St/Grand Central Station in New York City. The films were created with a backpack-concealed camera that shoots footage of train platforms from inside approaching cars. It’s pretty eerie the way quick gestures are still movements in a mostly frozen frame, but with a small fraction of the speed. Hair flips, hands grabbing for bags, children chasing each other—they’re all turned into scenes straight out of Kirsten Dunst’s semi-smashing (and super depressing) apocalypse film, Melancholia:

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