Christian Catafago

After a long weekend in Berlin’s subway system, I went to discover the subway of Madrid, strangely, without having visited the city besides the Thyssen Museum and a small stunt at a local Sunday market, I spent 4 days on the “línea circular número 6”. I discovered a very long and slow line circling the periphery of the city. It allowed me to encounter all suburban inhabitants typologies. It was already summer, and the heat was unbearable, and I needed to rehydrate at all times, consequently going in and out of the subway for natural needs. People were scantily clad, and I needed to avoid problems with photography taking. My camera remained the Rolleiflex which I had chosen not to keep hidden it is in Madrid that I understood how lucky I was to have taken that decision as I saw a young man being beaten up for having taken a “hidden” picture of a young woman. Walker Evans would have had some problems with the contraption he had imagined to take pictures on the subway here. I actually was happy with the slowness of the picture taking process with my Rolleiflex; it was turning 50 years old that same day.