Willy Spiller is a Swiss photographer who came to New York in 1977, the year Ed Koch became mayor.
At first Willy stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. Then he found an apartment on Broadway near the 72nd Street 1/2/3 station.
Willy returned to Zürich in 1984. In 1986, Willy published Subway New York, a collection of his subway photographs with writing by German journalist Sabina Lietzmann, came out in 1986.
Thirty years later, he published another version, titled Hell on Wheels, which is how many people imagine the subway around 1980.
That said, the image on the cover, a detail of this picture taken on the A train to the Rockaways, has heavenly light:
This image has been the most popular of all Willy’s subway photographs, he says.
I got a storm of enthusiasm. A lot of people wrote, “How beautiful! How lovely!”
In 2023, a new edition of Hell on Wheels came out. At a moment when everyone has a camera in their phone, the picture looked invasive or prurient to some.
That’s not how Willy sees it, or remembers the moment he took it:
I noticed those girls and I thought the how the light came in and how they are joyful sitting there having a good time. And I immediately went there and snapped a few shots, and the doors closed and they went — they left.
But they were very enthusiastic, you know, being photographed. They loved that!
Unlike Walker Evans or Rebecca Davis (or me), Willy always has his camera out in the open on the subway:
You can see that by the perspective. I don’t shoot from the hip, you know, while sitting and and snapping pictures away secretly. I don’t do that. I think this is not nice.
So I was standing there, and people sometimes people stare into the camera, sometimes they smile, sometimes they are suspicious.
And me too, of course: I could see special people, young guys who are judging or estimate, is that a victim or not?
So I looked back. And sometimes I got into discussion, but mostly very nice.
Willy heard from a man who recognized his mother as one of the schoolgirls on the A train.
Likewise, a Georgia pastor wrote to Willy and said his wife was the woman looking back at the camera in the picture below:
Some people look at a camera when they see one pointed at them:
But not everyone.
The older couple stayed in the car, me too, till it was almost empty.
And they had a good time. They kind of schmoozed together, and I took a lot of pictures.
They pretended not to see.
I interviewed Willy on June 29, 2023.