[Leica] IMGs: French Accent (Portfolio)

[mitcha at mac.com (mitcha at mac.com)]

Jayanand,

Not speaking about taking the backs of people, my feeling is that the issue 
goes deeper than people going back to doing what they were after you after 
the photographer asks permission. While I am sure that the method you 
espouse works for you, it eliminates, or at least potentially compromises, a 
whole range of pictures, of which an iconic example is HCB?s shot of a man 
jumping over a puddle. No matter how much the photographer becomes ?a part 
of the scene,? the idea of ?depiction? becomes largely compromised. Look at 
the photography of Moriyama Daido -- and also at some of the videos of him 
shooting what he calls ?no finder shots? by just pointing his small p&s 
camera (formerly a Ricoh GR1 or GR21) at the subject. 

The Moriyama example also highlights the point that is not an issue if 
?Eastern? vs ?Western? approaches to street photography. I live in Bangkok 
where it?s perhaps even easier to photograph people in the street than in 
most of India ? and, since I speak the language I can communicate with 
everyone ? but, when I want to depict life, I would not want to ask 
permission. Better to do the Moriyama-type no finder shot. Here?s a link for 
downloading a 30-shot portfolio from my Bangkok Hysteria book project, which 
you may be interested in looking at for some examples: http://bit.ly/1zWPzwl

?Mitch



> Subject: [Leica] IMGs: French Accent (Portfolio)
> From: jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 11:56:57 +0530
> References: <2CA89E21-E91C-46B7-A854-C6E87205AF79 at mac.com>
> Mitch,
> This is where we differ - I think that without eye contact, interactions
> with strangers on the street lose a lot of their pizzaz, and any chance
> whatsoever of "seeing the soul of the subject". In the same breath, I would
> also add that, IMHO, seeing the face of human beings, 99.9% of the time, is
> far preferable to seeing their backs!
> 
> Asking permission of the subject, taking a couple of shots and showing it
> to them works very well in India - because, by and large, once you do this,
> they lose their self consciousness and go back to doing what they were
> doing, and forget that you are there - in effect you become a part of the
> person's "inner comfort circle" at once! The western method of street
> photography, to pretend, and go through an elaborate charade, to appear as
> if you are not surreptitiously taking photographs, is really not required
> here. One can be quite direct.
> 
> I try all the time for eye contact in the wilderness with animals/birds as
> well, it adds quite an element of danger and tension, and adds some punch
> to what are otherwise fairly mundane captures.
> 
> Cheers
> Jayanand
> 
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 11:10 AM, <mitcha at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for the kind words, Jaya and Douglas B.
> >
> > Douglas - eye contact is good in some pictures, but I wouldn?t make it a
> > general rule for street photography because then a lot of the pictures 
> > you
> > shoot will be ?street portraits.? If the aim is ?documentation" or
> > ?depiction,? then the photographer won?t want eye contact in many of the
> > pictures. On internet forums many people write how they prefer to ask the
> > subjects permission before shooting, bout that often leads to the subject
> > posing, which often tends to undermine both documenting and depicting.
> >
> > ?Mitch