With a snappy shot every day in his phlog
Travis Ruse makes a moving impact
on our experience of daily life in transit.
Photo editor Travis Ruse not particularly suffers from tunnel vision.
By Hans Arend de Wit
Looking for new and interesting phlogs on the web, specialized blogs devoted to stimulating and intriguing photographs, I hit upon the Express Train, http://www.travisruse.com/, by Travis Ruse. I was amazed by the large picture, the strong colorful impact, the brilliance of the colors and the decisive moment at which the shots were taken, many meters under the ground. I looked back to previous photographs on the site and a wealth of images in the online archives, and I understood that here a great photographer was at work, in the subway.
I got the impression that Ruse reached a high level in the art of making himself invisible. And he doesn't seem to feel endangered with all those assertive characters around him who keep a keen eye on what he's up to.
When Ruse first began taking photos in the subway, and for a long time after, he would get stopped by undercover transit officers who, he recalled, were hostile and always seemed to be wearing New Jersey Jets shirts "It's like the official uniform of undercover transit cops," Ruse said. Now Ruse carries a copy of a letter he requested from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which states that, strictly speaking, taking photos in the subway is not illegal. What is illegal is using equipment like a tripod without a permit.
In the course of his project, Ruse has developed a fondness for the transit system, and he seems unfazed by the various inconveniences of riding the subways. Not long ago, when a fire broke out at a station downtown, his train sat under the East River for an hour. "And I was standing up," he recalled. "But how often do I get stuck under the East River? I began to think, is there a picture here?"
"The pictures I take are of the little moments," Ruse said to have once said to a police officer, "who had been watching me suspiciously, while I clicked away with my Canon 20D."
After Ruse was a News Photo Editor for SABA Press and Sygma Press he currently works at Inc. magazine as the Associate Photo Editor. Inc., a magazine for Entrepreneurs.
Born in Daytona in 1968 and after studying photography at the South East Center for Photographic Studies in Daytona Beach, Florida, he moved to NYC. There Ruse assisted other photographers before heading out on his own. In 1999 he took a "desk" job because he wanted to stay closer to home, and he figured he could continue to work on his personal projects. It wasn't until 5 years later that Ruse started his first project, this project. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I work in midtown Manhattan. 42nd & Lexington Ave., to be exact, right across from Grand Central Station. As the crow flies, that's just 6 miles. But on the tracks, it can be three trains, 11 stops, and 45 minutes each way. What he shoots is what he sees every day commuting to and from work. It was through the discovery of Photoblogs that Ruse realized how and where to display his photos. Nowadays he gets around 2000 people every day to look at them.
Besides Cartier-Bresson, who Ruse thinks is an influence for us all, even if we don't know it or admit it, gives credit to William Klein, Bruce Davidson and Danny Lyons, amongst others. William Klein's work has always been had special meaning for me. He is a photographer that made work that seemed to have such a strong narrative. He did not mind that his work, though documentary, many times seemed as much about himself than who or what was in the images. Bruce Davidson's Subway book is the yardstick by which all photographers who shoot in the subway will ever be measured. And Danny Lyons photographed the most important stories he could find, his life. We should all concentrate on that first and foremost.
