Carmel Delshad
Photographer Margaret Wroblewski remembers the discomfort she felt after a man tried to grab her during her commute on the Metro. She took to Snapchat to express her frustration to her friends. And as the responses rolled in, she realized she wasn’t alone.
“I decided to use that story to motivate me to start this project,” Wroblewski said of embarking on a photo series documenting stories of harassment on public transit.
Since beginning the project in October 2017, Wroblewski has taken portraits of roughly 30 people. Most of them tell stories of commuters in the District, but others span the East Coast.
They’re part of Wroblewski’s master thesis at The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University.
Her series garnered local and national attention during the height of the #MeToo movement, as attention turned from workplace harassment to everyday harassment that many people — primarily women — face.
Through her time documenting these stories, Wroblewski says there are many commonalities among the men and women who share their harassment stories.
“It’s kind of scary how a lot of these stories overlap and how they’re so similar to one another,” she said. Harassment can happen in broad daylight. And in some cases, her interviewees told her, reports of harassment go nowhere with authorities.
“The sound of the shutter has always been stuck in my head. The way his finger moved along the seam of my pants, up and up. I don’t own that photograph, he does. That man owns something of me. He can put that wherever he wants, and I have no control over that.”
-Owen (Philadelphia)Margaret Wroblewski
“One morning, I felt something in my lap. I didn’t think I had anything in my lap, so I forced myself to wake up. I looked down, and there was a hand touching my crotch. I stood up, pushed the old man out of his seat and yelled at him to get off of me. No one asked if I was O.K. Nobody cared. Nobody even looked up.” — Anonymous (Washington, D.C.)Margaret Wroblewski
Six portraits and their corresponding stories hang in the light-filled exhibit space at The Corcoran. And next to them are four Metro car seats.
“I decided to get Metro seats to really put the person in the place of where an assault can and does happen, and get them to really think about what it feels like in that moment … being trapped in a moving vehicle.”
Metro recently launched a new campaign to “STOP harassment” during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, focusing on four strategies: Sidetrack, Tell, Observe and Postpone.
In response to a WAMU inquiry, a representative for the transit agency said:
“Metro takes any incident of sexual harassment seriously. While Metro is a relatively safe system, harassment of any kind is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. That’s why we encourage riders who witness or experience any type of sexual harassment, assault, groping or lewd behavior to report it to Metro Transit Police through our various channels … our police take reports of criminal sexual misconduct seriously and use every tool available, including Metro’s state-of-the-art network of digital cameras, to identify offenders and bring them to justice.”
Wroblewski says she hopes her work gives a voice to people who have shared an experience.
“Hopefully this thesis project … lets individuals who’ve been assaulted and harassed [know] that they have a safe place to share their story,” Wroblewski said.
Since launching in 2017, Wroblewski says she’s received a lot of feedback — both good and bad. Some people have questioned why she’s focusing on the issue, and say there are more important topics to tackle.
“I’ll use those negative comments to propel me to keep working on it and working harder, and using them as an inspiration to motivate [people] that sexual assault does happen. These stories are real, and our society needs to do better about how to handle them,” she said.
Margaret Wroblewski’s “Underground” series at The Corcoran’s NEXT Exhibition from April 25 through May 18.
