Life Changes

AS TRAMS, TRAINS AND BUSES RUN ON TRACKS AND ROADS.

Few activities affect us so much that we rarely stop thinking about them. Studies researched about the  relationship between commuting and our well-being - it is significantly affecting us. These trips are often so profound that we rarely switch off and consciously perceive our environment. Technology and social pressure often make us apathetic extras today.

We care less and less about what is going on around us, we are too busy with ourselves - we just don't care. We may fail to enjoy the first rays of an early morning sun while we are using our smartphone. We are always online and busy, we would never find out how a moment might have affected us being more attentive. Especially not when we are on the tram to the next stop in our lives.

Time goes by rapidly

Why do good moments fly by while unpleasant situations seem endlessly long?

Like Robert Levine, who traveled the world to compare the "pace of life" of different cultures, I often ask myself this question. He found out that a culture's sense of time has profound consequences for the emotional well-being of an individual. Clocks and calendars determine our lives today. 

The time, however, is an artificial indication of time, and dependence on it leads to stress, health problems and hectic rush. We no longer live in the rhythm of natural time! Industrialization made this measurable. How we perceive the passage of time arises from our movement, i.e. our sense of time is based on muscle movements. People in restless metropolises speak and move twice as fast as those in rural regions.

We metropolitans are always under time pressure, seldom pause and no longer see the time because of all the clocks around us.

Are WE LESS CURIOUS

And became more JUDGMENTAL?

We're too busy with ourselves. We pay just as little attention to the look and facial expression of another person as we do to the person who observes and photographs us from outside through a window.

We constantly evaluate people based on our individual experiences. Our primal instinct actually helps us to distinguish between friend and foe - fight or run away. If, after a brief, superficial assessment, someone obviously does not fit into the picture of our value system, we put them, figuratively speaking, in a drawer or in the wastebasket.

Nobody is value-free, not even me, that would be a lie. With gentle mindfulness, let me in for a moment, try to be open and stay curious. While I watch people in public, I often wonder what they are feeling at the moment or what is bothering them

Everything is impermanent

Life is too short to be wasted in autopilot mode

The “Bim”, as we Viennese call our tram, will be completely replaced and the old models will disappear from our cityscape. Nothing lasts! In the midst of impermanence, the person sits and clings to the fact that everything remains as it is. Although he's the only species that is aware of its impermanence. However, if one becomes aware of the sublimity of life, it becomes clear to one that only the moment, the here and now, counts.

We can capture the moments in pictures, but what has passed never comes back in the same way. It's like trying to take two identical pictures. It won't work, it's never exactly the same moment ……. always a little bit different. But if I direct my attention to the transience of life, I experience its magical moments even more intensely in the present.

What remains when you go?

I ask myself this question when I think about my (street) photography.

Life is not a party bus on the way to the next impressive scenery. It has several facets and acts, and WE participate in it ... whether we like it or not. Through the documentation of our society and my project "The Commuters" I found a deeper access to the work of Robert Frank. Many refer to him as the guide in real documentary work. His photos are raw and close, sometimes very rough, as everyday life can be. His work inspires me. My motivation is to grasp reality and capture the present in my photos. In the imagery, I concentrate on my unadulterated view and my message. For me it's about content, not perfect staging.

I understand how important it is to document my era and have already taken numerous recordings of places that no longer exist. And of people who are no longer with us.

Some may not find this so exciting right now, but in more than 20 years the images of places and people that no longer exist will be very interesting for generations to come.

Images and Text © Sascha van der Werf