‘I wanted to capture the range of British culture at the time’: the photographer who documented late nights on the 90s London tube

Mark McEvoy’s tube photographs, taken in London Underground carriages at around 11pm on Friday and Saturday nights from 1992 to 1995, capture moments that may seem superficially frivolous, but might be the most significant of our lives. These are the golden hours of the end of the week, where friendships are found and sealed; gabbled conversation rolls along with the sway of the carriages; and new lovers meet up en route for an encounter that may turn out to be a fleeting one-off, or in fact the beginnings of a lifelong companionship.

All are swept along in the scramble to hop onboard the last tube – a panic that ended when all-night services began on some lines 10 years ago this month. The night tube arrived when my time of going out all weekend was fading, and gave me a slight feeling of missing out. Looking at photos of other people’s social lives can make one feel like that too; at the same time, it’s not hard to see ourselves in these tired, happy and thoughtful faces.

These images feel so natural in part because McEvoy was not a voyeur but a participant in London’s mid-90s nightlife. Living in a shared flat in Camden Town, north London, he was part of the capital’s music scene, describing himself as “slightly hippy-ish, trendy, kind of casual, into funk, jazz and reggae”; he “smoked a lot of weed”. One night, travelling home from Brixton, he was struck by being surrounded by a very London mixture of people of different ages, races, sexualities and pop-cultural scenes – the tube carriage became a beautiful stage. “We’ve all been there,” he says of the underground train. “We can straight away relate to that space.”

Thus inspired, he spent the next two years going underground around traditional pub closing time on Friday and Saturday nights. Most of the pictures were taken after McEvoy had asked his subjects for permission, and he found that usually they’d pose for a shot, then just carry on doing what they were doing before.

The images are rooted in their time by the old wooden-floored rolling stock and tube seat patterns, and by the fashions of London’s subcultures: casuals, rockabillies, goths, and punks doing the punk thing and responding to requests for a photo by baring their arses. McEvoy documented the last years of the fiercely tribal nature of British youth culture before it was flattened out by the internet, as streaming homogenised music tastes.

The lack of smartphones in these photos is striking. Yet the energy in them feels curiously universal, expressive of a particularly British shedding of reserve and the joy of closing time and just before, when a good night brings up the feeling that there’s always the potential for something more.

Even today, with gen Z drinking far less than their predecessors, you still see similar scenes on the underground, although at 4am the train rattles along more quietly, carrying more wreckage. The life in the faces that McEvoy snapped three decades ago endures in a new generation, and even in those of us who are old enough to know better but still sometimes find ourselves rushing for the night tube. How can it not? It’s the eternal energy of London, written on skin and flesh; rage and laughter, smiles and tears.

‘We’ve all been there, we can all relate’: Mark McAvoy on five of his night tube photographs

(Main picture, above) “This couple were nuzzling up to each other, and when I asked if I could take a picture, they said yes straight away and started kissing. It was kind of a performance, but then it wasn’t. They thought: oh, this guy’s asked to take a picture; come on, let’s give him this. Or maybe they were about to kiss anyway.”

“This passenger told me he’d just moved from the States. The big reason was because he got shot in the shoulder in gang crossfire. We started talking about the difference between America and England, and he said it was getting as bad here. I guess he was feeling the London tension.”

“The other side of my photography is capturing these moments. This is one of my favourite pictures in a way, because I obviously didn’t ask him to sit there, and he may or may not be praying. There were a few candid ones like that; people just crashed out, maybe having a rough time.”

“I was very aware of all these different lives just passing each other, different backgrounds, ages, groups, tribes. I wanted to try to capture the variety of that: the wide range of British culture in that space at that moment.”

“These guys were running through the compartments. New Year’s Eve had just struck, so they thought: well, we’re not going to be able to make it up to Trafalgar Square, so let’s go crazy here.”

“He was drunk. As I stood up to get off, he said he wanted to be my assistant and followed me everywhere I went. He started talking to this Irish couple. I didn’t even know what they said, but within five seconds they started punching each other; it was mayhem. Then the train stopped. I just backed off the train very slowly and watched the doors close and the whole commotion disappear.”

Mark McEvoy’s zine London Underground 1992-1995 is out now. A selection of the tube series photos is planned for display at the London Transport Museum in spring 2027.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.