Bodies of Stillness

This series sits inside a system built for connection - trains linking cities, platforms linking routes, strangers moving past each other without ever meeting. I shot my partner and our friend Ricky in the West Oakland station during a rare quiet window, when the space felt emptied out, almost suspended. Without the usual crowd, the architecture becomes a kind of skeleton for movement: railings, stairs, lines pointing everywhere at once.

Against that backdrop, the two of them create a different kind of connection: slow, gentle, unguarded. Their bodies lean, overlap, repeat. They drift in and out of sync like two signals crossing. It felt important to use two men here, especially men of color, and let them occupy a softness they rarely get reflected back at them through the world.

BART’s whole purpose is to move people from one place to another. But these images pause inside the system, looking at the moments when connection has nothing to do with transit. It’s the kind that happens in the quiet in-between: when you’re waiting, when time stretches, when you can actually feel the person beside you.

Models: Adan Aspericueta, Ricardo Ledezma