On the Bus

by

These images are from a series of photographs taken on the city bus and around the bus stops in downtown Austin. While bus riders are a diverse group, they tend to be poor or working class, and the bus is their only means of getting places–to work, to play or to visit friends.

Many of the people in these images don’t even ride the bus. They’ll come to the bus stops in the morning and just hang out. They are people with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do; for them the bus stop is a place to rest, meet friends, chat, pass the time. One woman would always be at a bus stop, all day, day after day. She didn’t talk to anyone, just sat and waited. Not for a bus or anything else. She just waited.

Sometimes people would ask, even insist, that I take their picture. It didn’t matter that they would never see the photo. Having their picture taken represented some kind of validation. It was proof, a record: They had been there.

Harrison Saunders is Senior Art Director at Bozell Kamstra.