Monday to Friday
Irit Garty & Isaac Layish

“Monday to Friday” is a week in pictures, a diary consisting of snapshots of everyday life in politics, sports, media and law, as provided by the free newspaper “Metro”. This paper is distributed in the entrance to the underground transport system in various major cities (in this case London and Helsinki) and consumed for the duration of one journey only – usually by people on their way to work – as the most base and reduced form of “a news flash” on the latest events.

After discovering that a similar paper under the same name is published in Finland as well as in London, we decided to synchronize the two over the duration of a week. We wanted to see what issues would arise by comparing two identical formats with parallel target audiences, each creating their own metropolitan bubble of reality.

In London the paper has a lifetime each day of approximately two hours until it runs out, disappearing into the city, whereas in Helsinki it is recycled by the public and hung on the handles and bars inside the train carriages, ready for re-consumption.

In a reversal of the idea of magic ink, whereas a written message appears only after time has passed and the letter arrived at its true addressee, we chose to remove the titles, captions and any text from the front pages, leaving the viewer with only the basic layout and press photographs visible as evidence of life continuing to operate over ground. This was done in an attempt to release the images and layout from functioning as a form of moral or ideological instruction as they invariably do together with their caption/text, even in a newspaper as seemingly innocuous as “Metro”, and to supply more breathing space for the emotional impact and personal meaning of each photo - hopefully discovering the inner structure and layout of a newspaper’s front page.