A small guide to Street Photography PT. 15
In 2018 I was invited by FIOF as speaker and to give a photowalk during the 3 days Festival in Orvieto, Italy. Through a selection of the work made during those days I want to propose you a journey in the mind of a street photographer.
When I'm traveling, for me it's about taking pictures as in a sort of personal diary. An experience in which I cannot turn off the gaze and the approach of a street photographer even when I photograph, apparently, things that can be defined as of other genres. In 2018 I photographed only in black and white.
I accompany you on this visual journey.
When I leave I keep the cameras in my hand luggage of course and I always keep myself ready to take pictures. I think airports are a great opportunity to document the human condition. People are in a particular state of mind. Stress, waiting, hope and fun too. I can read several expressions in their face and I photograph. I love to photograph in the airports. People is busy to make things and this is the ideal solution for a photographer focused on human gestures and expressions.
Airports are also particular places and rules can change depending where you find yourself. There are areas where to make photos is not allowed. As a photographer I often find myself photographing spaces and how human beings fill them, in that dimension of human landscape so dear to those who want to offer documentation on public environments.
Finally in Italy I started taking pictures of my hometown. Vitinia is on the outskirts of Rome and I grew up there. It was March but it was still very cold in Italy, to the point that I was wearing a coat and scarf. Something I'm not used to now living in Mexico. This photo I took at the station, in the afternoon when I left for Umbria. This disused building caught my attention. The open windows are a reminder of my vision as a photographer. They seem like open mouths to me, to the point that they become irresistible for me to photograph. Going back to photographing Vitinia after so many years excites me. I really don’t care if a photo is a street photograph or no, I just photograph what is interesting to me, and this is a recommendation I feel to give to all the readers of this guide.
I arrived in Orvieto at night. So early in the morning I wake up, have breakfast in the hotel's splendid Art Nouveau hall and decide to explore Orvieto. I photographed Orvieto when I was a child. With my Fujica. And the idea of being back here, this time as a professional photographer is like a circle that closes. Although I know Orvieto to me, now with my Mexican eyes, it's like a whole new place. A place of priceless poetry. And the photograph I take here is necessarily affected by this state of mind that it suggests to me.
My approach is very Japanese. I find myself photographing like a child, but with a certain awareness of the results I want to achieve. I want to enjoy this experience in the Umbrian town exactly like when I found myself here with my class in elementary school. Orvieto sings poetry to me and I can not help but try to record it with my camera.
After dinner in Orvieto I want to photograph at night. My photograph comes out broken and imperfect, instinctive, linked to my feeling of that moment.
Back in Rome I have a few days to photograph my city and I decide to retrace all the places I prefer when I lived there. For me it is like a re-immersion in an environment that I feel is mine and distant at the same time. And knowing that in two months, after this trip, I will be back with my wife for a good month.
I want my street photography to be instinctive and energetic, without mediation, as direct as only the street can be. It is not about me. My photography has never been about me even though I make my life bleed a lot with photography and writing. But it is more about wanting to capture the essence of the place and that moment found in the street. I think we see far too many visual exhibitionists these days. But to tell the world as it is and to be able to capture the essence of a place and of the human condition is my mission.
The greatest street photographers and those who inspire me most were all interested and dominated by an interest in others and society and were not wrapped up in themselves. I think this marks the difference between me and other street photographers today.
I am not making street photography because instagram likes or general approval.
The way street is experienced by many today I think that photos like this are considered simple portraits in the street. I don't care. What dominates in me is the desire for a photograph of a certain type. A photograph that, well, I see it again after three or ten years, and I can still propose it, perhaps discussing it in a guide to street photography.
When I photograph another thing I care about is that the image can let anyone who can observe it enter the scene.
Sometimes I stop on the street and write notes on my moleskine. My reflections on the content and composition of an image are converted into useful notes first of all for myself, but then it happens that they become part of the books I write.
Cliche or not I have to photograph. People who do things. The position and use of the hands. A box supported with the hands behind the body as in this case. When I find small crucial details that contribute to a story on the street, I shoot.
I happen to find myself simply shooting scenes where there is a flow of people each moving in their own direction. Photos that probably only make sense to me or that simply help me while meditating on the photographic experience.
However, when there is an interaction between people I find myself shooting because it offers me a line of action, something that happens on the street and that reveals to me that everyday life that I want to represent. And if it's just for myself, that's okay.
As a commercial photographer, I am a portraitist. This cannot be overshadowed when looking at my work as a street photographer. People have always intrigued me and it's a pure, genuine feeling. It is not about using people as pawns on the compositional chessboard. It is more an interest as a writer. A writer who probes on a psychological level who has in front of him.
For this reason I don't really like those photographers who make people ugly with their photography. Hey, it is just me. But I want to photograph people where they can find a bit of themselves.
Again: it is not about me. It can be about my understanding of he world. And despite the world appears everyday more and more ugly I am still a romantic with a positive idea of life and the world.
In this shot you can capture a lot of my photographic predilection: a gesture, expressions and postures, how the human being fills the public space, the contextualization within the urban scene where you can understand where you are.
I have seen how reading sociology and psychology texts helps me a lot and has made my photography more complex over time. Gestalt psychology can be a key to opening a different dimension to the photography you take. Both from a compositional and content point of view. And this photo is an example.
In fact, I think that a place like instagram where the attention for a shot lasts a maximum of 3 seconds is not the ideal context for my photography. And I actually think it can't be for any good street photographer who isn't just aiming for the ephemeral wow effect. A photograph should not be explained, but a photograph should have a matrix of ideas that allow you to be able to talk about the photo.
Despite some think this, street photography is not random photos on the public spaces. It requires a high visual and humanistic culture.
Then you run into situations like this. So not everything can be mediated and built through knowledge of a certain type. The photography of characters in the street has been an illustrious companion of the street photographer since the dawn of the history of photography.
A photo like this I call it a Gildenesque moment and when it happens I really don’t think that much to composition. It just depends where you find at the moment. I mean…let me explain better this…if you have time to position yourself in the best possible way with respect to the subject, compose and photograph, that’s good, but if this doesn’t happen, I don’t know you, but I want to have a picture of the character.
This man, taxi driver, is the photo. Everything else is context. And I'm fine with it. The light acts as a beacon that illuminates the story.
In the idea of a street photography that highlights energy as a photographer I am drawn to how the urban environment can be littered with directions and subjects.
In this shot, the shadow rips through the frame in a way that helps make the composition dynamic. The shadowy face of the woman in the foreground who is about to leave the frame renders it with a touch of mystery.
As soon as I get back to Mexico, I go shopping with my wife. With each return it is a new beginning. And to return to the dimension of Mexico compared to Rome, a pike leap.
I live in a particular area where you pass from one sidewalk to the other from Mexico City to the state of Mexico. Exactly in the border I made this photo. The main subject has an advantage thanks to the compositional solution that I was able to create.
We often read about the importance of filling the frame. But how do you fill the frame? And what technique do you use to do it?
I argue that everything always depends on what you frame. It is not about filling the frame as imperative. It's about making a certain image effective. If you ask me what I love more of Garry Winogrand is that he showed how to have vertical images of women photographed in the street. I love how he has shown this skill several times in the book Women Are Beautiful. When you shoot in the street is not easy to all to photograph a person coming next to you and having a good shot.
The small guide continues with other examples on the street in oreder to offer you more elements from the street photographer point of view. I started this guide with the idea to share the basic of street photography, but I think that is useful to share with the readers of this guide some resources more in order to offer a real inspirational text to anyone interested to make photos on the street.
