Through an extensive collection of slow motion black-and-white videos, Josh Melnick’s The 8 Train takes advantage of cutting edge scientific video technology to re-examine the function of portraiture. Set against the familiar backdrop of the New York City subway, Melnick’s split-second portraits of New York City subway riders extend a fraction of real time in the life of each rider for several minutes, creating an ethereal sense of suspended time somewhere between photographic stillness and cinematic motion. In The 8 Train, Melnick explores portraiture as a means of reorienting our perception of human relationships. Viewers are invited into the intimate textures and narratives of strangers from all walks of life, each of whom could be any one of us.