The exhibition at the Brookline Arts Center will also include two large-format photographs by B.D. Colen's son. Ben Colen, 32, a photographer for Skateboarder magazine, spent three years when he was in his twenties taking pictures in Boston subway tunnels with his friend Sean Keenan. The photos, taken between 2 and 5 a.m., when the trains weren't running, were shot with exposures as long as six minutes, making the dark tunnels appear illuminated by natural light.
One time, Ben Colen said, he lost track of time and had to crawl out of a manhole on Boylston Street when the trains started running again in the morning. But most of the time, he just saw "a lot of rats and not a whole lot else." He tried to explore an abandoned subway tunnel near Downtown Crossing once, "but it was so dark that a flashlight was useless," he said. The idea, like the tunnel, had to be abandoned.
Colen said he and his friend were afraid of getting caught by the T's maintenance workers, so they snuck along without talking to each other so as not to make any noise.
"The architecture and the way they were built is sort of an interesting thing to see," Colen said, "but no one gets to it."
JULIE MASIS
