Video + Gallery: a saturday pushing me to the limits
It was a day of fruitful work on the street. I went further, getting lost in streets I had never explored, knowing full well that these are places not recommended to go with a camera.
But street photography is a more important motivation than any fear. My little, anonymous camera was, once again, a perfect companion. A mini project for my photo zines series also came out. The historic center of Mexico City preserves several souls within it. Suddenly you can find yourself in the most popular area and thus pass from via Montenapoleone to Naples. All I'm looking for is vibrant street life so I don't have much trouble going even where I shouldn't go.
All these years have served me. Both on a technical level and in the management of emotions on the street. The daily experience of living in a barrio allows me to escape even the clear difficulty of attracting attention and appearing as an unwary tourist. My chilango way of walking helps a lot. I am a white caucasian but with 13 years to live here.
Humanity is all that interests me on the street and I document it in every way. My approach is direct, I don't ask for permission, I sometimes apply the technique in your face, I don't waste time talking even afterwards but I don't refuse to smile and thank you if the situation requires it. What you see, as I explain in the video, does not show excessively violent or degraded scenes. In Mexico many scenes in front of me may seem just vernacular photography and yes, they are, I don’t have issues with this definition. But the act of photographing in certain places is something else. And perhaps I am more fascinated by the experience itself than by the resulting images. I have a different feeling. And the photographs I take in places where no one pushes to photograph give me greater gratification.
I believe that I am also fascinated by what remains on the surface but which hides something else in the genesis of creating images in certain places, the popular neighborhoods that so passionate my pace as a photographer. But I think it's a determinism of all my photography: a portrait is not just a portrait just as my photograph wears a dress but behind it you also feel disturbing backgrounds. To simplify what I say, I propose this photo which is also the cover of the second volume of the photo zine and the thumbnail for YouTube:
This is a photo taken on the fly, obviously without asking, even if it looks like a posed portrait. The restless gaze is often part of my research, what i want to achieve. I will not stay here to dwell on the analysis of how I want the portraits, but I can tell you that I am not looking for something usual or worse than this, didactic. All the best portraits I've seen and loved shun what most photographers take: I am reffering to Diane Arbus, Stephen Shore, Richard Kern, Nan Goldin but also Daido Moriyama. And for me, portrait photography is not just one where I ask your permission or agree before we work together. I believe that part of photography is also taking fragments, stealing souls through a click.
And if I ask you this thing about stealing it vanishes or maybe I have to work on it to try to really get what I want which is something completely spontaneous, something that probes inside you and therefore your awareness does not work.
The photos taken on Saturday are quite good. Here I propose a selection for all readers of this blog. Here is the superiority of reading a blog than going to an instagram account or any other social network. The experience is completely different, guys. Here I put emotions, considerations, sometimes thought provoking, a photographer must be appreciated, today, on his/her website and then, clearly, he is valued more in prints and books. Enjoy the photos:
