Adam Sinclair - The Passenger

Artist Statement: This photograph was taken in the middle of Melbourne’s winter, late in the evening on a busy city tram. I’d been working on a project documenting city life after the sun had gone down. I wasn’t on the tram to go anywhere, it was a loop, like life.

There is no better place to observe our togetherness, our weariness and strangeness as on a tram. Families chat about dinner, city workers stare blankly at the walls, young people ignore it all with Spotify in their ears. I have made quiet pictures of many of them.

Invariably when a collective comes together, the boundaries of that collective come into view, as in this image. The passenger’s head barely moved from his hands save to stare out the window for a moment. The passenger seemed so tired, surrounded by us and yet somehow on the fringes of us. I took this photo to notice them. For us to notice them. To recognise that we were all there, and alive, all at the same time.