Gestures and Street Photography
People will do the same things, again and again, there’s a way that we all have of mimicking our responses to things so that we become socialised. Everybody stops at the corner, looks both ways, and then darts into the street.
Joel Meyerowitz
Yesterday I was in Downtown and I made a lot of photos.
As a street photographer I am an observant a bit of a psychologist. This means that we have to be naturally empathetic and genuinely interested to people. It is not about making photos, in the first place. It is about to that will to observe and allow us to become narrators of those human gestures.
I learned from Joel Meyerowitz about the importance of gestures in a street photo. He is a continuous reference for me. It is in his idea and ability to capture the normality of everyday life that makes me feel particularly close to him for approach and photographic interest.
In Meyerowitz's work you don't find stupid juxtapositions of color or optical effects. His work can be defined old school street photography and that is my goal. A documentation of reality just like is. I think in a gesture or an expression of a person there is the magic and I don’t have any need to see a chicken with a laser vision.
I want to see the poetry of the humanity in the public realm. Both as a lover of other people's photography and as a photographer.
When I find these moments so simple yet so extraordinarily important for the soul I have to photograph them. As a photographer I don't follow trends. Photography is a fact with ourselves and I only have to follow myself. As a kid I used to shoot with a plastic Fujica. I caught the expressions on the faces of my family members. I like to think that I'm still doing the same on the street. Nothing has really changed, apart from the fact that there is now a real awareness, as a professional and experienced photographer.
Gestures are revealing of a person's soul. We can understand certain characteristics, intuit a little of what the person is, despite the fact that we are photographing strangers in a handful of moments.
This is my main focus and the reason why I am a street photographer.
