Photographer puts everyday Metro life in the picture
An online photography exhibition is aiming to capture a unique snapshot of everyday life on the Tyne and Wear Metro system.
Terminus - by documentary photographer Sasha Mallo Tardiveau - is a digital photo exhibit chronicling life on the transport system during the final two years that the original train fleet was running.
Sasha’s photo essay features Metro’s most important asset – its customers – and are the result of many hours travelling on the system, meeting people and taking their pictures.
Her work takes on a candid style, showing life as it happens, documenting a key time between 2024 and 2026, as the new Metro train fleet replaced the old ones.
Terminus captures moments – the daily commute, people going to football matches, people in thought, couples chatting and embracing, interactions, chance encounters – as Sasha travelled from station to station, and ending with one of the last old Metro train at the breakers yard.
She said: “I just wanted to show moments of real life. It’s been two years of work and I hope I’ve captured some candid moments, recording normal life on the Metro system.
“The focus was always daily life. Things that seem mundane tell a story when you see the photo of that moment.
“People are at the heart of this project, along with our iconic Metro system and I wanted to document the last two years as the old train fleet was being phased out.”
She added: “I can’t thank people enough for appearing in my pictures.
"They are just ordinary moments, but when you frame them in a photograph they can become iconic, and when people see that photo they want to know the story.
Sasha says she drew on the work of celebrated photographer Bruce Davidson, who used his camera to tell the story of the New York Subway in the 1980s, and Mike Goldwater, who documented life on the London Underground between 1970 and 1980.
She added: “I’ve drawn inspiration from their work and wanted to emulate that style and bring it to our own Metro system.”
Terminus can be seen at www.sidegallery.co.uk/blog/terminus and on Sasha’s own social media channels, Instagram: @mallo.tardivography.
Lynne Dickinson, station delivery manager at Nexus, said: “Sasha’s photographs are iconic. She’s framed normal life on our Metro system, where people rely on the services that we deliver to travel around.
"We commend her for the project, which is the culmination of two years of dedicated work.”