Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/07/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In my younger years I did a lot of street photography with my IIIf and with a Canon P. I enjoyed it a lot and I have thousands of pictures in my vaults. I'm 50 now. I have from time to time tried street photography recently, and I find that I just can't get it to work any more. For me, street photography meant forming an instantaneous bond of some kind with a person on the street and then taking his or her picture, and then walking on. What it means to "get it to work" is that I look somebody in the eye, let them see my camera, they look back at me, and I photograph them. I've never much cared for the kind of photography in which the subject does not know that he is being photographed. About 3 years ago I was in Rome trying to be a street photographer, and a friend who was with me said "you look like a plainclothes policeman or a spy; everyone is afraid of you". Several times since then I've asked friends to comment on what they see when I point cameras at people on the street, and they've said the same thing: "people react to you as if you were a policeman or a government official; they instinctively hide." So I guess I have the wrong appearance to be a street photographer. I look too official. Since I used to be able to do it, and I think I did it well, I know that something has changed. But I think the change is in me and not in society. Brian