Seeing London Commuters as Renaissance Paintings

Bored during his daily commute through London one day, photographer Matt Crabtree, like his fellow Tube dwellers, was staring at his phone. When he looked up, he saw “a woman that was held in a moment that just looked so beautiful and serene,” Crabtree tells CityLab over email. She was “lit from above by the harsh Tube lighting, reading a book that could’ve been a treasured prayer book from centuries past—a million miles away from the Tube carriage 200 feet below London.”

Crabtree raised his phone and snapped a picture. A self-taught photographer and a creative director at an advertising agency in London, the Yorkshire resident was inspired by the results to embark on a series of commuter photographs.