Adam Magyar is a photographer and videographer whose work depicts daily life in the world’s biggest cities. He is fascinated by the flow of time and by glimpses of individual lives, and dreams of capturing the full reality of a group of people in a single image.

In his hypnotic video Stainless, 42 Street, Magyar slows time almost to a halt for everything but his camera, which travels down a subway platform in New York City, memorializing commuters in the moment of the train’s arrival.

Stainless, 42 Street is a part of Magyar’s international Stainless series, named for the metallic subway cars in New York City, where he started the project. Using a customized high-speed camera, he films from the window of the train as it pulls into the station, then stretches the footage to slow the movement of people on the platform to near stillness.

“I’ve been working on photographing moving subway trains for a few years, working with industrial cameras and the incredible amount of detail that only a machine eye can see. When I process the data I see an endless row of living sculptures. The film unveils the beauty that lies in the simplest of scenes and the commonest of situations. Time turned almost tangible.”

–Adam Magyar

“For Summer Season 2019, we are presenting a trio of Midnight Moments that are idiosyncratic portraits of Times Square, accentuating significant aspects of this neighborhood, and revealing almost as much about the artists who made them. Adam Magyar takes us down into the subway system, whose converging lines make Times Square the busiest transportation hub in the city. His slow motion camera brings rush hour to a nearly total stop — which sounds like a nightmare, but feels like bliss — sculpting a moment out of time to appreciate the drama and dignity in our daily commutes.”

–Andrew Dinwiddie, Acting Director, Times Square Arts