Ten years ago B.D. Colen started photographing the commuter culture on the T and the condition that Colen describes as “Isolation in a crowd.”
This work, which spans 10 years of riding the T and documenting fellow commuters, is the making of a new exhibit, Alone, Together, which is featured on The Social Documentary Network. In B.D. Colen’s words:
The title says it all. Perhaps nowhere are we forced into such close proximity as we are in subways, and yet we seek out, and maintain, our private space. For a year I carried a camera during my daily commute on the Boston MBTA Green and Red lines and sought to capture isolation in the crowd.
B.D. Colen sat down with BPR’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan to talk about this work, about the current state of photography, and why he thinks whoever gave cell phones the capacity to record video should win a Nobel Peace Prize.
B.D. Colen has taught documentary photography at MIT for 15 years, and for 26 years he was a reporter at The Washington Post and Newsday, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting.
You can see B.D. Colen’s entire exhibit, Alone, Together, here and you can listen to his appearance on Boston Public Radio below.
