In 1979, the New York City subway recorded 250 serious crimes per week. There were six murders in the first two months of that year. No subway in the world could match the crime rate of New York.
Swedish photographer Willy Spiller, who lived in New York at the time, documented the journey through the subway tunnels with the passionate curiosity of a foreigner who admired the speed and madness of that time. The photo project was called "Hell on wheels".
It was the time of the appearance of rap, graffiti, the film adaptation of the video game The Warriors and the first term of Ed Koch as mayor of the city. Willy Spiller's photographs can be called a visual document of that time, a vivid poem to the city and its inhabitants.
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