There was a station I used to pass every day on my way home in my first months in Moscow. It was completely unremarkable, grey and concrete. I would sometimes need to get off there if the train I was on was being diverted to a very short, three-stations-long light blue line. Kashirskaya is the last – or the first – stop on that line. Hence, one day, I got off there completely on purpose, and photographed life that was unfolding in front of me:
When one thinks of Russia, one thinks of spies. Its president is one of them, after all. This association comes to mind especially vividly in the light of the spy novels I’ve been listening to lately. Their well-developed Moscow plot is centred around Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, with the headquarters in Yasenevo.
Taking pictures of strangers still petrifies me – yet every now and then I kick myself out of my comfort zone to do what I promised myself to do. Here is yet another one of the last metro stations – Planernaya, the north-west end of the purple line. Its name sounds almost like Planetarnaya, which would mean The Planetary Station. I find this association highly relevant, as the very back of it looks like the exhaust pipe of a giant spaceship.
This is a sound postcard I recorded on Shchelkovskaya, to accompany the photographs you already had the chance to see. Enjoy.
My obsession with the Moscow metro does not seem to decrease with time – and I must say that it does not come as a surprise to me, since my life here is centred on the metro – the times when it opens and closes, the location of the stations, the intervals with which the trains depart. Moscow metro is an institution in itself, the most important means of transport, a major meeting point, a witness of history, a tourist attraction.
