A Morning Subway

A Morning Subway dates from Kim's early period at Tama Art University, when she first turned to the Tokyo commuter system as her central subject. The print likely depicts the dense, vertical compression of bodies inside a moving carriage during rush hour, a scene the artist would have observed daily on her own commute. The chine collé technique — adhering thin sheets of [washi](/glossary/washi) or Korean hanji to the etched plate during printing — allows Kim to introduce zones of muted tonal contrast that read as fabric, fluorescent light, or window reflection. Hand colouring, applied after the impression has dried, registers individual passengers within the larger pattern of the crowd. The work belongs to a sustained sequence in which the subway functions as both architectural container and social diagram, recording the silent proximity strangers maintain in transit. As an early statement of her urban iconography, it establishes the framing devices — shallow pictorial space, repeated vertical and horizontal partitions, frieze-like figural arrangement — that recur throughout her subsequent platform and crowd compositions.