Another Time, Perhaps

(an Australian train station- how I wish that all train stations were)

I spent about an hour today taking photographing life at Union Station in LA. Even after living in LA for four years, I still managed to get lost in the maze of freeways that is downtown LA while I was driving to the station.

I'd never been inside of Union Station, I'd only ever picked up people there after dark when the area is totally dead; I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the charming interior of the station, which made me feel like I had gone back to an era where elegant men smoked pipes and read the paper while waiting for the evening train. It was strange to see people casually dressed in tee shirts and jeans rushing about such a romantic space; the urban train tracks were even more of a contrast to the inside of the station than the hurried travelers were. Ascending up the stairs to the tracks from the station was actually a pretty harsh experience: the light was harsh, not softly diffused as it had been inside, the tracks were metal, not wooden as I had so romantically envisioned, and the trains were like huge bullets, rather than quaint wooden boxes.

By the time I had taken all of my pictures and returned to my car, I was exhausted by the collision of time periods that I had experienced during my wander through Union Station. I cannot wait to see what side of the station my film captured more: the old feeling of the station or the modern hustle and bustle of life.