![Keep your distance: don't touch in the subway crush. These images, by Israeli Natan Divr, will be exhibited during the ...](/content/dam/images/g/v/w/6/4/v/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gvw8j0.png/1493962005798.jpg)
"People don't touch each other in New York," comments Israeli-born photographer Natan Divr. "In Israel everyone touches each other, we're tactile and like to be involved. In New York people talk about personal space and this is really evident when you're riding the subway.
"To me, personal space is a foreign concept and something I find incredibly interesting from a visual perspective."
The subway, with its tentacle-like reach spreading underneath the city, has held a fascination for Divr from the moment he arrived in New York in 2003. There to study for a Master of Fine Arts, he says the first thing he wanted to photograph was this intricate underground network. "We don't have subways in Israel. It amazed me that I could get on a train and cross the city so fast!"
While the physical architecture of the subways has provided Divr with an aesthetically alluring setting for his new photographic series Platforms, he says "being visually cute" is never enough. "It was very clear to me from the first picture that there was a disconnection with people, a relationship between them and the space itself. This connection of the architecture to the psychology of the city really resonated with me. I have always felt the lack of communication here. Seeing that manifest itself in my pictures totally made sense on every level. This is my subway, this is my New York".
!["To me, personal space is a foreign concept," says Divr of what drove him to photograph New York's commuters.](/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/n/9/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493700220779.jpg)
Divr is in Australia for Sydney's Head On Photo Festival where Platforms will make its worldwide debut. Platforms features a series of intriguing photographs of people framed in the pillars of the subway. The pictures could be mistaken for triptychs, but are in fact single images that resemble a filmstrip, or as Divr suggests, display windows.
He says the photographs communicate what was "a very voyeuristic experience. I am looking at the people and trying to find them in interesting situations or different relationships. To do that is the utmost extreme of voyeurism, not in a sexual way, but in looking in from the outside and I am inviting my audience to be voyeuristic as well."
Standing on the opposite platform with camera in hand, at six feet five inches Divr cut an imposing figure. Discovering how people reacted to him taking photographs also became part of the project. Some posed, while others hid behind the pillars. There were those who gave him the finger or yelled abuse. Only once was he concerned, not for his own safety, but for the inebriated youth who crossed the tracks to confront him. But most ignored him. All of these responses inform the work, presenting a rich, multilayered conversation about New Yorkers specifically, and more broadly, the urban experience.
Divr likens photographing Platforms to capturing a series of fast one-act plays. "I see the platforms as a stage. Every few minutes there was a curtain call that changed the set and brought new actors. Sometimes the performances were great, others were frustrating. But that's all part of what I see as celebrating reality."
Platforms by Natan Divr. Head On Photo Festival Hub, 74-80 Druitt Street, Sydney. Until May 14. Free artist talk, 1pm, May 8.
!["It was very clear to me," says Divr, "from the first picture that there was a disconnection with people."](/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/n/8/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493700220718.jpg)
![Photographer Natan Divr: some of his subjects gave him the finger, others hid behind pillars.](/content/dam/images/g/v/y/a/m/n/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493881488044.jpg)
![Trick or treat: a man wearing a Batman costume, two women wearing Ghost Busters costumes, and another woman wait at 14th ...](/content/dam/images/g/v/w/6/5/c/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493603646944.jpg)
![Divr sees his photography as capturing a series of fast one-act plays.](/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/n/5/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493700218480.jpg)
![Way to go: commuters walk towards a staircase to exit 14th Street-Union Square station after getting off the N train.](/content/dam/images/g/v/w/6/4/z/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1493603637612.jpg)
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