I spent my first few years with a camera concentrating on black and white portrait, still-life, and landscape images. My photography was often described as feeling lonely and dark, and those feelings were reflected in my life. Eventually, as I grew older, my life circumstances and my views of the world changed. I took a break from photography for about 3 years after I finished with photography class. Then I slowly started to gain interest in another type of photography that was very different from my previous work; street photography. I found street photography to have a certain romanticism about it. I gradually discovered the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Fan Ho, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier; the list goes on. The timing, the subjects, the locations, the stories they implied, the historical significance, the motivations, everything about street photography enticed me. I saw it as a type of photojournalism, but instead of setting out to tell a particular story as accurately as possible, street photography told an unspecified story, about anything it wanted, without the same requirements of objectivity as photojournalism. It could be used to describe an aspect of society with clever juxtaposition, for example, or to demonstrate nothing more than the sense of humor of the photographer. In a sense a street photographer is telling their own story. A story about how they see the world, using focus on specific people and places, to convey what draws their attention in life and what matters most to them, even if they didn’t realize what that was.
Street photography isn’t all about subjectivity of course, you are still working within the confines of reality, relying on events going on around you to create your photographs, but street photography exists in a grey area between art and journalism. The photographer’s mind could be focused on historical context and storytelling, or instead on pure visual abstraction. The goals or methods of street photography aren’t important to defining it, what best defines street photography is the type of subjects captured, their relation to each other and the environment, and their relationship to the photographer. And perhaps most importantly, timing. Or as Cartier-Bresson would say, the decisive moment.
It’s a difficult type of photography to explain. Even the name doesn’t adequately describe it. It doesn’t have to use the street as a backdrop. You could do street photography anywhere at any time. Street photography is so hard to explain, that it might be easier to just say there are only two types of photography; street and portrait. The contrived and the spontaneous. Street photography is, essentially, just candid shooting of the world. You don’t plan, you don’t have a set goal of the images you wish to create. Instead, you set out into the world and capture whatever catches your eye. You have no idea what you’ll get, or even that you will get anything at all. Good street photography encourages the viewer to not only appreciate the scene or the subjects, but also question the motivations of the photographer. To find those motivations, sometimes you have to look deep into the picture. It could be an attempt at symbolism, an exercise of color and form, or some small detail hidden in the composition, or something else entirely.
The photographer isn’t even important. Analyzing the motivations behind a photograph can be done without even considering who took it. Street photographs are perfect for staring into and looking for meaning and details. The motivations I mentioned, that are so important to a great photograph, could exist purely in the mind of the viewer and be completely different to those of the photographer. It can be felt subconsciously, rather than rationally understood and articulated with words. Street photography can speak for itself. Relying on the real world means that beyond just the motivations of the photographer, the photographs carry with them historical meaning. It’s impossible to tell at the time the photo was taken how significant that meaning will be, however. Each image is a snapshot of a particular place and time, an event that only happened once, yet it can paint a picture of the world.
Even though street photography fascinated me for several years, I didn’t actually do any street photography until more than a decade from when I started taking pictures. My first time was about 5 years ago when a friend and I went to Manhattan one summer night on a whim. It was late, and a weeknight, so the streets were fairly quiet. We spent a few hours walking around and taking pictures. Starting on 31st street right outside Penn Station, going all the way down to Canal Street in Soho and back. It was a long walk and we just made it back to Penn Station in time to get one of the last trains back to New Jersey. Exploring the streets of Manhattan seeking out anything that captivated me was engaging and oddly therapeutic. I was hooked from that night on, and have been exploring the streets of NYC, camera in hand, searching for moments ever since.
I now see myself as a street photographer first, before any other type of photography. I’m always the most satisfied when I capture a good street image. There is something about being at the right place at the right time, being able to recognize when something special is happening in front of you, and lastly being able to capture it perfectly. Usually it doesn’t work out, sometimes the composition might be wrong, or I missed the moment by a fraction of a second. For every hundred photos I take on the street, I’m lucky if I get a single good one. Although this type of perfection is rare, when everything lines up just right, the pursuit of it creates of strong desire in me. I just feel the need to do it. When I go too long without creating what I consider a good street photo, I feel a sense of anxiety the grows with time. I need to do this. I need to create. I need to find these moments.
Street photography is the most challenging type of photography I’ve tried. Recognizing when a photo is in front of you isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes when I see something that interests me, I am too distracted by it to take a picture. I become sort of mesmerized at times, but as I do this more and more, I find this happens less. My instincts became more honed with practice and I began to see the world in terms of photographs, as if the frame lines are superimposed over everything I see. I don’t even have a good way to describe exactly what interests me. I just know that I choose to point my camera in one direction at a particular subject or scene, and not at another. Perhaps, someday, I will look back and understand my true motivations better.
To focus my mind to take pictures on the street, I tell myself, nearly constantly, that if something is worth a second look, it’s worth a photograph. I find Its best not to think in that moment, but rather I’m better off just taking the pictures of anything that catches my eye and figuring out later that drew me in. The world moves too fast for me to be conscious about my photography, I just have to trust my gut. Sometimes I know right away, as soon as I hit the shutter, exactly why it was a good photograph. But many times, I don’t notice until I look back later, sometimes months later, and realize that everything came together just right. The details in a picture, the little things that are so easy to miss, can be everything to making a good image to me. Everything in frame is an equal part to a good photograph, everything is the subject.
Every street photographer has their own way of approaching the street. Some work slow and methodically, relying on patience to get the shot. I move quickly, I rarely stop or slow down. I dart in and out of crowds, change direction on a whim. I rapidly point my camera around a scene in search of pictures. I could take a picture of one subject and within a few seconds already be on the other side of the street, capturing something else that caught my attention while I was still focusing on the first subject. The only times I slow down and wait are times I find the perfect scene, the lighting perhaps is just right on a particular street corner, and I just have to wait for a subject to enter that scene before snapping my shot. Sometimes I’ll stay at a spot like this for a few minutes and capture several subjects entering the scene before moving on. These slower moments are rare by comparison, however. There isn’t any good reason I work this way, it’s just what feels right to me. It’s not any better than any other approach, in fact it often makes me miss shots because I move too quick for my own good. This best describes how I work on what I consider to be ‘good days’, but sometimes I have bad days, where I take few photographs and feel as if nothing is happening around me. I believe these bad days are less a product of bad luck, that no good moments appear around me, and more to do with my mental state. There are always moments, but sometimes my mood prevents me from truly seeing them. My personal emotions and motivations wax and wane, they can permit me to see with perfect clarity, or blind me to the world.
My methods might change with my mood, but I never try to hide the fact I am taking pictures. I hold my camera up to my chest or face as I walk, and smile if anyone notices me. Most people don’t notice me. In NYC a man walking around taking pictures is far from an unusual sight. Some street photographers prefer to be a bit secretive while they work, but I want to be open and obvious. I believe this is my way of feeling comfortable about photographing strangers. Street photography can be intimidating and takes getting used to. At first, I felt strange, but as time passed I realized that most people just don’t care. I’m an introverted person, usually, so this type of photography places me outside of my comfort zone frequently. On the rare occasions someone asks me what I’m doing I tell them I am documenting this day in New York. That’s the most concise answer I have since I’m a type of documentary photographer; I suppose.
Despite my years of practicing photography, I don’t consider myself to be a strongly creative person. I find coming up with novel photographic, or generally artistic, concepts to be extremely difficult. When I was a student, I found that the most taxing aspect of art projects was coming up with that initial spark of creativity you need to begin. Once that was found the rest of the project followed naturally and with very little further effort on my part. Even today, I find that I need to stumble upon that spark naturally. I’m often hesitant to call myself an artist, and refer to what I do as art, because of this struggle with creativity I have. Street photography has become a perfect outlet for me, because I’m literally searching the real world for something creative, something interesting. I don’t have to sit there for hours attempting to form new ideas from nothing, instead I can explore the street and I just have to be able to recognize a photograph when it presents itself to me. It’s an entirely different creative process, one that I never find stressful. And it I don’t find anything at all…well at least I went out for a nice walk.
Compared to my early work as a photographer, these photographs are full of life and energy. Those old photos give a sense of longing and loneliness, and that mood dominated my first decade or so of photography. I’m not sure, at least not right now, what changed in my life to cause this shift in focus and outlook. It came a few months after I returned from spending a month hiking along the Appalachian Trail, a period which I consider to be some of the most important and formative few weeks of my life. I’m not sure if this experience was what caused the change, or if there is something else I’ll discover about myself in the future to explain it. Perhaps there is no single explanation for it. However, sometimes I notice elements of my old work still creeping into my street photography. A sign, I believe, that the work of an artist is influenced as much by their past as their present. Personal artistic expression is a continually evolving process of self-discovery. The new work is based upon the foundation of the old.
After years working as a photographer, trying different types of photography and experimenting with various techniques, I learned that street photography most clearly expresses myself, and my vision of the world. It's the only true photographic outlet I have, at least right now. Life is ever changing, and I have no idea what will capture my attention in the future, but for now all other photography I do is just a hobby for me. This is who I am, it’s what I am compelled to do.
AFTERWORD:
The purpose of writing the “Finding a Subject” series was to explore, at a personal level, my experience and work with photography by revisiting my entire body of work up until now. I started from the first few days I had with a camera, and have now finished by discussing my current work with street photography. Now that its over (at least for now), I realized that many of the photos I created during the time period I discussed in part two, may have been more self-reflective than my street work. It’s true that the version of myself who made those photos isn’t the same as the one who writes this today, but there was something deeply personal in those photos. Something that, perhaps, is missing from my work now. I see that as potential for further growth as a photographer, but only time will tell.