Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Most of my street photos are not candid, in the sense that usually people cotton on to the fact that they're being photographed. A pair of eyes, even if they're not those of the main subject, boring into you out of the picture can sometimes really make the whole frame resonate. Anyway, post asks why do it, if not for fame, to decorate our apartments or earn $$$ for new shoes for the baby? My answer: because good photography, like all good art, is research into the world and ourselves. From the day I first started taking people pictures I realised the camera was the most direct way I had ever found of not just showing, but discovering, how I felt about the world and how it looked to me. A very good motion picture cameraman called Mike Fox once told me (when drunk, I think, as it was after a long day shooting) that whereas people often say good cameramen had 'a good eye', he thought good cameramen were actually people who couldn't see very well...but were always trying to see better. I think I agree with that, even if it sounds a tad pretentious. For a longer exposition of the same thing, read Robert Frank's Guggenheim Application in the long-out-of-print but often-to-be-found-in-bookstores 'Photographers on Photography', from which the quote in my sig is culled. (He in turn nicked it from Malraux). This also has HCB's introduction from THE DECISIVE MOMENT in it, I think (what a stupid title, by the way...HCB is much more about the indecisive moment, which the original French title implies). One final comment: street photography at its best is not OF but ABOUT the world. Not OF people and things, but ABOUT the relationships between people and people and people and things and things and things and all of these with ourselves. The same goes for great landscape photography, which is why it is so hard -- as opposed to merely good landscape photography, which is relatively easy IMHO. But I would say that, I suppose. - -- Johnny Deadman "One is ashamed to want so much for oneself - but how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?" - Robert Frank