Life On A Long-Distance Train

“For the most part long-distance trains are for people trying to get their lives together, to find work, or to reunite with people they love whom they hope will love them back.” In ‘The Search For Great Man’, American photographer McNair Evans captured the passengers of long-distance trains. They kill the long hours of  transit in many ways: by reading, playing, talking on the phone, sleeping. But most of all, people on Evans’s photographs seem to go with their thoughts beyond the train, focusing on what waits for them at the end of the journey. “For the most part long-distance trains are for people trying to get their lives together, to find work, or to reunite with people they love whom they hope will love them back,” explains Evans. Trying to get to the core of their ‘real’ journey, the photographer asked the passengers to write something about themselves – why they were traveling, where they were coming from, and where they hoped to go. He says: “Individually their stories are about a desire for something to happen, or a situation they are trying to rectify. A single mother commuting to the oil fields of North Dakota. A teenage son hoping to reunite with his father.” Through candid portraits and genuine life stories, Evans managed not only to document a part of American society, but also poetically captures deeper meanings of ‘the journey’.