Life Below: The New York City Subway

Since the early 1990s, Christophe Agou, a French photographer, has been taking pictures of New York. He has developed a love for the city and an uncanny feel for the look of the ordinary. The New York subway has captured the imaginations of photographers from Walter Evans to Bruce Davidson. But never has it been so powerfully and lyrically portrayed as in Agou's carefully orchestrated sequences where the searing images haunt and intrigue us at the same time. Bridging the worlds of documentary and art photography, Life Below is a series of frozen moments, revealing fear, love, affection, stress and solitude. These are compellingly intimate photographs of people from all walks of life, in a meditative state before they put on a mask.