Underground brilliance
AFP PHOTO/Christof Stache
By Sylvain Estibal
I returned to Paris a few months ago after several years posted in South America. My daily commute is now on the city metro and after all that time in sun-drenched and vibrant Latin America, I find it boring, dirty and depressing. The lighting is especially harsh and the only colours seem to come from advertisements.
While travelling, I think to myself: people in other countries must be having more fun on their subway systems.
Take Moscow, for instance. The Russian capital’s underground is a true museum of culture. Even the trains sometimes serve as the venue for art exhibitions. I decided to go online to look for the most beautiful underground systems in Europe, then asked AFP photographers in several European cities to head underground with their camera gear. The assignment was simple: Only interior shots and only in especially beautiful stations.
That was it really. Judge for yourself as to whether it was worth the effort.
AFP PHOTO/Kirill Kudryavtsev
The most famous of all subway systems is arguably Moscow’s. The stations were initially conceived as solemn and formal “underground palaces”, an artistic and technological marvel. The complex, initiated in the 1930s under Stalin, was designed with the idea of reinforcing Muscovites’ patriotic feelings and aesthetic values, architectural propaganda to strengthen communist utopian ideals for the city and its people.
Above all, Soviet leaders did not want the Moscow metro to look like anything that might be found in Europe -- especially the subway of Paris, with its grimy walls, shoddy lighting and screeching trains.
Instead, the Soviets wanted their metro to embody socialist ideals and promote its simplistic vision of endless celebration. The stations were supposed illustrate the country’s heroic past, it’s splendid present and the magnificent future to come.
AFP PHOTO/Kirill Kudryavtsev
Of course, the future didn’t turn out quite as the Soviet leaders had imagined. Today the metro is perhaps more widely appreciated by foreigners than by harried locals, who complain of rush-hour overcrowding. And many in Moscow deride their underground system, saying it’s only for poor people. Those of means prefer to get around by car.
It’s not just Moscow. In Kiev, the famous metro station at Zoloti Vorota, which opened in 1989, takes for its inspiration latter-day Soviet aesthetics and the mediaeval architecture of Ukraine.
AFP PHOTO/Sergei Supinsky
The Stockholm metro is also worth the detour. It is not only clean, safe and reliable but -- for the price of a ticket -- you can visit a real museum filled with mosaics, paintings and art installations. More than 150 artists helped with its decoration.
AFP PHOTO/Jonathan Nackstrand
Subway systems can become a tourist attraction in their own right. The Stockholm metro’s website even takes a swipe at the Moscow underground, saying its art is “pompous, not very modern and made up mainly of architectural adornments.”
AFP PHOTO/Jonathan Nackstrand
But in my view, the most spectacular metro venue of all is the Toledo station in Naples, rendered by Spanish architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca. On visiting the station, it feels almost as though you are floating in outer space.
AFP PHOTO/Mario Laporta
AFP photo clients have a huge appetite for photos capturing different slices of society. Hard news remains at the heart of what we do, but we’ve expanded our output of this type of work. Each month, we send our team of photographers around the world to shoot a theme: housing, police, the elderly, religion etc.
It’s a great way to document our changing world.