Tag: Street Photography

Exercise—Street photography

I was on holiday in London for this exercise, so I decided to shoot my 60 images in an area where I would be guaranteed a never-ending supply of movement and subjects: Piccadilly Circus.

The contact sheets for my 30 black and white images are here:

I set the camera’s electronic viewfinder to black and white mode for this series to help me to visualise the final product more easily. Without the presence of colour in the frame, I found that I was drawn to cleaner lines, textures and contrasts. I find that the same thing happens when I review the completed images.

The contact sheets for my 30 colour images are here:

For the colour series, I set the electronic viewfinder back to a colour mode and found myself more often looking for striking colour, such as the presence of a red object in the frame. For a few frames I also tried to exaggerate the effect of some of the colour by using a longer shutter speed and panning with the movement of the subject. The colour images are naturally more like the world we see, and it was perhaps for that reason that I wanted to liven things up a bit by playing with intentional blur. And it is fair to say, as many people have, that black and white images are already an abstraction for people with normal sight.

At the same time, I am hesitant to overemphasise the changes I made in my approach to shooting or viewing colour versus black and white. I expect that, unless it specifically plays to the strengths inherent to colour or black and white, an image might be strong or weak regardless of the presence of colour.

I can’t say that I prefer one set over the other. Each has its place. I did, however, have a preference for black and white images for quite a while. There were probably a few reasons for this: they were more similar to what I had seen produced by the ‘legends’ of photography; they telegraphed to viewers that I was trying to do something a bit more ‘serious’ with my photographs; I learned to develop and print in a black and white darkroom; and, frankly, I found it easier to rescue marginal images (mixed lighting, blown highlights, etc.) with black and white processing techniques.

Research point—Street photography

It is strange that the CAN manual takes time to distinguish documentary photography from reportage, but refers to ‘street photography’ without offering any definition. The most common features of street photography seem to be images made outside the studio, often as a result of random encounters with people in an urban setting. Nevertheless, some examples do not include people at all and others have been created in non-urban environments. Perhaps the most useful working definition of street photography is a broad one: “the impulse to take candid pictures in the stream of everyday life.” (Howarth and McLaren, 2011, p.9)

Helen Levitt (1913-2009, NYC) — worked for commercial photographer, inspired by Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Images of children and immigrant communities in NYC. Works included in the inaugural exhibition of MoMA’s photography department in 1939. Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1960.

Joel Meyerowitz (1938- , NYC) — an early advocate of colour photography. Worked with different formats for street photography, from 35mm to large format. Only photographer allocated unrestricted access to Ground Zero in Manhattan. Guggenheim Fellow twice and awarded a Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2012.

Paul Graham (1956- , Stafford, UK) — sequential colour prints of people engaged in daily life. Twelve-volume photobook A Shimmer of Possibility (2007) calling attention to overlooked activities or places. First show 1986; color photographs with Martin Parr and Richard Billingham.

Joel Sternfeld (1944- , NYC) — large-format color photographs of American towns and cities. Disused places, derelict sites, dispossessed people. Influenced by roadside photography of Walker Evans. Began producing colour photographs during the early 1970s after reading both Johannes Itten’s and Josef Albers’s theories on colour. Has taught photography at Sarah Lawrence College since 1985.

Martin Parr (1952- , Epsom, UK) — themes of consumerism, globalization, and social class. Switched from black-and-white to colour photography in 1984, became a member of Magnum Photos in 1988. Photobooks, filmmaking and fashion editorial work.

Fred Herzog (1930- , Stuttgart, Germany) — moved to Vancouver in 1953. Substantial body of images of life in Vancouver over 50 years. Much of the work was produced on slow Kodachrome stock. Anticipated “New Colour” of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston? Active in Vancouver’s art scene while working as a medical photographer from 1957 to 1990. 

Brandon Stanton (1984- , Marietta, GA) — photographer, blogger and author of Humans of New York. Set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot portraits on a city map. This became the “Humans of New York” Facebook page, which he started in November 2010 and later a book of the same name. Street portraits with short quotes from subjects.

References

Campany, D. et al. (2017) Fred Herzog: modern color. Hatje Cantz.

Howarth, S.and McLaren, S. (2011) Street photography now. Thames & Hudson.

Parr, M.and Phillips, S.S. (2007) Martin Parr. Phaidon Press.

Stanton, B. (2013) Humans of New York. St. Martin’s Press.

Westerbeck, C. and Meyerowitz, J. (2005) Joel Meyerowitz. Phaidon.