BOOK: HELL ON WHEELS

How a young Swiss photographer named Willy Spiller captured a lost microcosm of New York on the subway in its grittiest era

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.
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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.
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The result of Spiller’s eight years of subway photography was a slim, softcover book with a name — “Subway New York” — that sounded more like a city-sponsored freebie guide than the work of a sharp-eyed artist with masterful camera-handling skills; printed only in German, it was published in 1986 and noticed mostly by critics, who were impressed. Thirty years later, in 2016, the book was redesigned and released with the considerably more provocative title “Hell on Wheels.” This time, it caught fire; “Hell’s” initial printing sold out in weeks. Since then, the book has been much sought after and difficult to find. You might stumble across a copy on Amazon, but it will cost you $2,300.
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Which brings us to the new edition of “Hell on Wheels,” available on June 26, from Edition/Gallery Bildhalle. The title remains the same, but something remarkable, something unexpected, happens when you look at the photos today, 40 years after the fact. The distance that time has afforded lets us see the pictures in a wholly different light: with the ache of nostalgia rather than the pulse of fear.

Bildhalle.ch