Montréal Métro - Street photography gone underground
Street photography gone underground.
I spent about half my life growing up in and around Montréal, Québec. Riding the Métro was a big part of that — to college, downtown to buy CDs, up to the Plateau where I eventually lived. I haven't called the city home for many years, but whenever I return and ride the Métro, none of it has changed. The sounds, the smells. It is like stepping back into another life.
For this project I set out to capture a series of long exposure photographs inside several stations — slow shutter speeds, trains blurring into streaks of blue, the architecture holding still. In researching the stations, I discovered a history much richer than I expected.
The main system was designed in the 1960s under a dominant Brutalist influence — raw, rugged, deliberately unadorned. But what makes the Montréal Métro remarkable is that each station was assigned its own designer, creating a network of surprising variety. No two stations look alike. Captured on a Fuji XT2 with a 16mm lens, though a second part shot on 120 film with a Mamiya 645 is coming.
National Museum Kraków (MNK)
See the complete series — all four stations, the architects, and the exhibition context.
Things you didn't know about the Montréal Métro.
The distinctive smell comes from the oil used to treat the system's unique wooden brake shoes — found on no other metro in the world.
The chime before departure is produced by a 'peak chopper' — a device that prevents power surges when multiple trains depart simultaneously.
The entire network is operated from a secret location in downtown Montréal. For security reasons, the exact location has never been made public.
Portrait and headshot sessions in Ottawa & Gatineau.
17+ years · Award-winning · Available for editorial and commercial work