Stations: Lisboa
Lisboa is probably not a place that comes to mind when you think of transit, although Olaias Station regularly makes lists of most unique metro stations in the world. But in truth, the stations of the Lisboa metro are each miniature art galleries, decorated in azuelos—tiles inspired by Moorish architecture—unique to each station, each paying homage to places, events, and history of the area above.
And Gare do Oriente, the main train station in the city, is an architectural masterpiece by Santiago Calatrava who is perhaps best known for the Oculus rail station in New York City. Its post-modern presence looms large in a city full of traditional architecture.
Every stop invites you off the train to explore. Every stop makes you feel like you’re missing out on something just above the surface. Every stop has a story to tell.
Train stations are liminal spaces, an intersection of people leaving and people returning, people beginning a journey and people completing one.
There is a striking symmetry to this liminality, in both time and space. The temporal symmetry of departing and arriving, of traveling in one direction and the other, is mirrored in the formal symmetry of the structure of train stations, and of the trains themselves. Railways are pairs of tracks; tracks are pairs of rails. To accommodate travelers headed in either direction, platforms might be single, set between the tracks, or double, set to either side. The escalator going up balances the escalator going down. Trains have cabs on each end (often) so they can travel in either direction, and seats on each side with an aisle down the middle (mostly).
In these images, I sought to create an almost cinematic rendering of my subjects from sometimes mundane and sometimes surprising angles, with the aim of capturing and accentuating the symmetries I found.
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