Walker Evans on the 6 Train

"To Helen Levitt, photographing in the subway (even though it was in fact against the law) was not daunting. Evans' difficulties looked to her more like a case of his usual inertia. Prodding him along, she volunteered to ride the subway with him as the photographer's foil. During the colder months of 1938, the two would set out for several hours of subway travel on the Lexington Avenue local, as he later described, 'down among the torn gum wrappers into the fetid, chattering, squealing cars underground.'"

In order to work inconspicuously, Evans did not use flash equipment in the subway car's dim available light but slowed his shutter speed down to a risky one fiftieth of a second. He painted the bright chrome parts of his 35mm Contax camera matte black, tucked its body under his coat with the lens slyly protruding between two buttons, and rigged the shutter to a cable release on a slender cord that led up to his right shoulder, down his sleeve, and into the palm of his hand. Sitting beside him, Levitt would feel him stiffen his back, his camera aimed at his captive and unsuspecting subjects, and know that he was about to squeeze the trigger. Every so often, they dismbarked onto a station platform for a cagarette break." - Walker Evans by Belinda Rathbone