Strangers on a Train

Dina Alfasi speaks to Tanvi Dhulia about her spellbinding portraits of the people she encounters on her daily route to work in Israel.

- Dina Alfasi

Lengthy morning commutes, as most of us can testify, tend to be dreary and monotonous. For Dina Alfasi, however, they’re a source of great inspiration. Bus and train windows serve as a backdrop for her artistic expression, and her unsuspecting models are often captured in deep contemplation.

“Every day I see dozens of people traveling by train or bus with me. I don’t take photos of most of them. But once I come across someone interesting, I have to feel that there is some story behind the character, something intriguing, exciting and attractive. It’s an inner and personal feeling that I find difficult to explain in words.

I’m trying to convey that sentiment in the frame.” Her daily commute to her building engineering job at a hospital, includes bus and train travel, where for two hours, each day, she comes across countless new faces that, for her, spark curiosity. “At first, to pass the time, I would just observe them and try to guess where they were going or what their story might be.” Eventually, she started making pictures with her phone of fascinating scenes that caught her attention. While these photographs made on public transport appear to belong to a series, each image is meant to tell an individual story.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

“This project brought me many achievements and publicity all over the world. I never dreamed that my pictures would be shown in galleries in cities like Paris and New York, and that my pictures would be published in magazines.”