Hell On Wheels (Signed, 2nd edition)

Willy Spiller
Hell On Wheels (Signed, 2nd edition)

Photographs: Willy Spiller

Publisher: Edition Bildhalle

128 pages

Year: 2023

Comments: Hardcover, 32 x 24 cm. 2nd edition. Colors photographs. Signed copy.

In May of 1977, a 30-year-old Swiss photographer named Willy Spiller, newly arrived in New York City and recovering from the one-two punch of jetlag and a night in the notorious Chelsea Hotel, descended the steps of the city’s subway for the first time.

Beginning that week and continuing for eight years, Willy Spiller brought his camera on the subway, and he shot. He shot cops and robbers. He shot the fashionable and the indigent, commuters and kids. He shot the unpredictable dance of strangers interacting in tin-can train cars. He shot the beginnings of stories whose ends he left to our imaginations. Film was expensive so he chose his moments carefully; still, over the years, he amassed some 2,000 frames.

Bill Shapiro