Going underground – in pictures

"Most of these shots are from the 1980s," says Mazzer. "I travelled on the tube every day, always shooting. This was King's Cross. I was walking to a platform – saw these guys. They'd got two stools to help them climb." Photograph: Bob Mazzer

"The lighting down in the tube, then, was tungsten lighting. That yellowy cast – it's very different now."
Photograph: Bob Mazzer

"This was New Year's Eve, in about 1988. People drinking beers on the tube wasn't something that happened everyday." Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Image4_01.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Tube-47.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

"It happens on the tube: you're on the platform for quite some time. Every so often someone rolls by and you think: what was that? This guy looked like the back of the guy in Grant Wood's American Gothic. And the roll of insulation foam on his lap kind of has the feel of a bale of hay." Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Tube-52F.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

""Some people have said the late-night shenanigans [in the pictures] look scary," says Mazzer. "I loved it; people did all sorts of crazy stuff." Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Tube-72A.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

"These are split seconds in people's lives. I would shoot a lot of pictures on the tube. On any journey I might take 25 and there might be one or none that were any good." Photograph: Bob Mazzer

61.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Tube-05.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Tube-45.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer

Image4.jpg Photograph: Bob Mazzer