What lurks beneath: demons and dead brides ride New York’s subway – in pictures

For 20 years, Seymour Licht has spent Halloween venturing below ground to capture outlandish costumes against the gritty backdrop of train carriages and stations

@mlestone
Main image: Hare raising … an image from Halloween Underground: New York Subway Portraits by Seymour Licht. Photograph: Seymour Licht

  • Halloween Underground captures Seymour Licht’s 20-year long quest to photograph people dressed up in outlandish costumes against the backdrop of the drab, gritty New York transit system. Originally the project began as a way to document the famously flamboyant Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. But Licht followed his instincts and found himself drawn more to the isolated, solitary, disguised individuals below ground, waiting on the subway platform or inside a train car for their stop to arrive. Halloween Underground: New York Subway Portraits by Seymour Licht is out now

  • The contrast between the uncanny, otherworldly apparitions and the act of normalcy that commuting implies fascinated Licht

  • You can read more about this image at the Observer’s Big Picture series

  • For one evening a year, the subway feels cinematic, mythical, harbouring stories and the suspension of disbelief

  • A statuesque cat woman dominating an open subway door

  • Stephen King’s heroine Carrie clutching a blood-soaked bouquet

  • Some are comical or very elaborate and inventive – here we see a patient who lost her brain and the doctor who holds it on a platter

  • Licht writes: ‘You may dream of going out in public dressed as a pharaoh, a seductive witch, an axe murderer or a mermaid. It is only on Halloween that you can enthusiastically change your identity without so much as a sideways glance from your fellow passengers, and the subway is the perfect mode to transport you from the mundane to the mystifying’

  • ‘As I crisscrossed the cars at the end of a work day, I rode among the 9-5ers heading home in their unremarkable street clothes and anticipated the revellers preening in their outfits as the prelude to the largest Halloween parade in the world - or some private night out where creativity is the currency and mystery and flirtation the prize’

  • ‘I searched out scenarios where the absurd melds into the banal, but could also be comic, outrageous or spellbinding’

  • A gigantic Frog Prince clutches the subway pole

  • The maze-like tunnels and murky catacombs invite comparison to the underworld of ancient mythologies, the perfect backdrop for Licht’s protagonists

  • In deadpan New York style passengers barely gave this spectacle a sideways glance

  • Halloween is New York at its most heightened state of quirky ingenuity

  • The subway becomes the unofficial backstage to the main events of the night, the green room for the supernatural

  • These characters are descended from the celebrants of the ancient pagan ritual dedicated to warding off evil spirits, which eventually evolved into the highly commercial trick or treat of postwar America

  • ‘While many of my subjects wore masks, I aimed to capture the essence of their persona,’ writes Licht

  • ‘I approached a young woman dressed as a nun who was walking briskly down a busy platform. She stopped for a photograph and, out of nowhere, a grisly bride materialised and put herself into the frame. They were complete strangers, yet both their characters were from horror movies and their appearance together created a powerful, cinematic scenario’

  • Licht’s patience and steady intention are reflected in his meticulous composition. This approach emphasises the importance of allowing a project to evolve over time. On any given year, he may only capture two to four portraits that work

  • A time capsule and a celebration of New York at its most ingenious, Licht writes that his dedication to the project is ‘a tribute to the vibrant outpouring of imagination and moxie as performed on that most iconic New York stage – the subway’

  • ‘Not long before daybreak, the pandemonium abates, and the world becomes ordinary again. With my Halloween portraits I hope to preserve the outbursts of creativity in my serendipitous encounters during this beloved holiday in New York’s underground’

Topics