TALES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
Your heart thuds like an analog kick drum, repeated over and over, quickening now and then, but always there, the only rhythm to a dark and silent night. You feel the heat of your breath brewing in the mask that covers your face, but you’ve observed the movements of the guards for days now so you hope you won’t need its protection. You also know it’s rarely that easy. You know you have ten minutes to get in, write and get out.
Similarly masked, a friend lifts the lid on the man hole and you drop inside, into the dark, into the underground.
This is the life of the underground writer, any graffiti artist who chooses to write on tube trains in major cities around the world. And it’s the life that Alex Fasko describes in Heavy Metal, a stunning photographic tribute to the writers that actually live those lives, day in, day out. The book is not simply a case of cold documentation. Instead, it brings to life a foreign existence, a life we really know nothing about. The hushed stillness of the night, the fear of being caught, the preparation, the speed and efficiency of the work, the determination required to succeed: we sense them all in Fasko’s pictures.
And in his commentary at the beginning of the book he provides some illuminating thoughts on the motivations and insights behind his work, issues that will resonate deeply with anyone involved with any kind of personal pursuit that others deem not normal:
“Introspection is no easy exercise, and it’s difficult finding words to describe the long path that brought life to this work. What direction had my thoughts taken?
Where was my creativity driving me throughout the slow and uncertain process of this book taking shape, like a newborn stream, from the very resistances and warnings of both friends (though supportive, at times they were skeptical) and enemies (chasing me day and night). I shall never forget the lights and smells of each shot: the flash popping among metallic dim neons, the pungent odour of acids and tints, my friends’ sweaters adrenaline-soaked by the excitement of capturing beauty. It wasn’t easy. Like that stream, this books is shaped by the stones of unexpected obstacles, by u-turns, sudden rushes, feverish research, and never ending nights of work. Diaphragm open, diaphragm closed, I have done it hundreds of times, bombarding trains, tunnels, human bodies in motion, capturing, fading, incriminating my subject on the spot, and then immediately forgiving. I have been searching for indisputable certainties among the darkest corners of our cities, and found that those corners are not dark at all: they are simply less illuminated.
One thing is sure: I believed in my work. Catching the action, I made it mine; mine forever, my lucid eternal conscience adding colour to the darkness of my nights. And now, holding this book in my hands, with my backpack full of images and stories, I recognise that old instinct of mine that kept me afloat beyond the outsiders’ line. People usually walk above tunnels and rarely venture into the cool breezy caverns that lie stretched underneath our homes. But there is an instinct, a need for resistance against the monochrome of the distant metropolis, a sometimes cruel, non-accepting society.
I wanted to be part of this resistance. I have resisted previous attempts to dissuade me from the future I had chosen for myself. I have resisted with the two weapons I know: my camera, and my never ending drive to capture hidden, underground realities, places of possible unmeasurable interest.
Places where your hopes and dreams find a name, and where colour emerges from the dark.”
