Although I enjoy having suitable equipment as a photographer, after shooting for 20 years I am a little over the continuous reviewing and discussing of the pros and cons of each and every camera that comes to the market place. I think we would all agree that ideas and their communication are the most interesting aspect of photography regardless of the medium or tool employed to convey them. Having made that statement I am now going to make a big exception. I suspect I am not alone in feeling that since giving up film cameras for the brave new world of digital capture there has always been a slight feeling of compromise and unease. Whilst I love the Canon DSLR's I have been using for my commercial work I have never really felt comfortable using them for my street photography, they have never fully replaced the Leica M6's that I used to employ on the streets...they are big, black and loud...and whilst the quality of their imagery is superb they represent a different way of working. The NYC street photographer Gus Powell put it very well in his interview with Michael David Murphy on 2point8
"I do a lot of work with the digital camera but it's all for editorial or commercial clients. I have tried to make my own pictures in the street with the digital camera, and continue to try to, but for whatever reason, real or imagined, I end up feeling like a pedophile. Even if I am taking a picture of a tree and a trash can I feel like a creep with a big lens and a mirror flapping away. I am sure that eventually the equipment will move on and there will be some sort of rangefinder camera that will do the job"
Well, in my opinion, Gus's wish and that of many other street photographers has been answered in the last few months with the release by Leica of the 18mp full frame M9 rangefinder camera. I have lived with the M9 for a couple of weeks before making this statement because over the years I have tried many new digital cameras and it has taken time for me to work with them on the street and discover their little niggles and idiosyncrasies.
Full Frame Leica M9 rangefinder
Lets first get out of the way the fact that this camera costs £5000 without a lens and very few of us can justify spending that much money on a camera. I am the first person to tell students that you don't need an expensive camera to make great street photographs and that is certainly the truth. Those of you who followed my trip around the world making pictures with a small Samsung cameraphone will know that I am sincere when I say that. Owning an M9 is not going to open your eyes, give you a new vision or great ideas.
I'm not going to talk about sensors or chips but I am going to tell you how nicely the small Leica body and 35mm f2 lens fits into the palm of your hand and how easily it zips up underneath your jacket so you can wear it hidden when you walk and travel and go about your day...and that is super important because street photographers need a camera that is going to fit seamlessly into their daily routine...if its too big or inconvenient you don't take it to the store when you go for bread and you miss the shot of the lady nibbling on her baguette (nearly wrote baps!) in the queue. The M9 is the only full frame digital camera that is small enough to pass the 'Turpin Jacket Zip up Test'. The M9 feels like the film Leicas we used to use, its a smidgin deeper but you hardly notice...you do, however, notice badly the lack of a resting place for your thumb where the wind on lever used to be. But Match Technical have already provided for that.
I was fairly happy with the Leica M8 but even that felt like a compromise, the half frame chip (doh!) meant all my lenses were unfamiliar lengths and the 10mp sensor (doh!) didn't really provide me with file sizes I was comfortable with for exhibition print quality at a reasonable size (Lets not even mention the IR filters we had to attach to every lens we used with it). Each Raw file from the M9 is giving me 34.7 mb of picture information. The M8 did show promise especially in producing beautiful 'film like' images that made my Canon files look very 'digital' in comparison...the M9 has retained this quality, producing files that seem very forgiving with an apparently broad dynamic range. The images so far have been extremely sharp and detailed which is much more than I can say for the Canon 7D I tried for a month recently. The M9 shutter release is very quiet indeed and would only be noticed in the quietest of locations, the motorised re-cocking of the shutter is somewhat louder but again it is only going to be heard in very serene surroundings...I took a photograph on the train this week and the gentleman across the aisle had no idea but the gentleman beside me did look up from his paper. The M9 allows you to delay the re-cocking noise by leaving your finger on the shutter release until you are able to release it more discretely. Leica rangefinders have always been excellent in low light situations, the lack of a mirror box firing reducing the vibration caused by the actual act of releasing the shutter. The M9 has taken this even further with a selectable 'soft' mode which releases the shutter electronically with the slightest touch on the release, the kind of touch that normally just brings the cameras metering to life. This is a great advantage over the fingertip stab needed to release the shutter of the M range of film cameras. In Switzerland last week I made images in a dark hotel foyer handheld at 1/6th of a second.
Handheld at 1/6th second using the M9's 'soft' mode shutter release.
Even in the street at night the M9 gives one the confidence to tackle difficult subjects at slow shutter speeds.
1/4 second handheld using continuous shooting mode.
The M9 is not perfect, it only allows 7 images to be recorded in succession before hitting the buffer, the lcd screen is a poor resolution and slow to render images but it is now viewable in bright light outdoors which the M8's wasn't. For me, however, the biggest problem is its high value, I actually feel a little nervous taking it out on the streets and am very nervous about taking it to places like Sau Paulo, Mexico City and Mumbai for a project I have planned this year...with a lens attached it is £7000 worth in a very small package and that makes me very anxious.
England expects every man will do his duty.
Detail of Leica M9 image at 400 iso
Further detail of Leica M9 image at 400 iso
There is currently no other camera this small, quiet and discreet that can deliver this sort of image quality and file size. If it weren't for the high purchase price it would be the perfect street camera. Overall I feel like I have lived through a short drought, one that the various compacts and DSLR's I've tried have not quenched. The Leica M9 feels like the camera I can take forward and make great pictures with again, I feel like I can stop looking for the perfect street tool and get back to the grind of actually communicating my ideas and shooting my projects. And that is a relief.
Normal non 'Gear Head' service will resume shortly.
The Leica M9, perfect street camera?
WHY is he pointing his camera at me?
Street photography is not a commercial activity, it is the only kind of 'art' photography that involves the public without their knowledge or cooperation. Even photojournalists who make pictures of people in public places are just doing their jobs and are seen as being, to one extent or another 'acceptable' because at least their motive for picture making is clear. The street photographer, however, is almost exclusively unmotivated by financial gain, so WHY is he pointing his camera at me?
The lack of a clear, quickly comprehensable reason for making pictures in public is probably the main reason that street photographers are particularly singled out for suspicion. When ones privacy is momentarily invaded by a photographer or cameraman in a public space the minor objection or irritation we feel is tempered when we realise that it is a commercial activity, we don't feel singled out, we accept it and walk on.
A conflict does exist between the street photographer and those candidly photographed, nearly half of the 500 respondents to my poll on this agreed with the statement The right of a person to privacy in a public place is equal to the right of the photographer to take a photograph in a public place. If both parties rights conflict equally there can be no resolution but perhaps the problem is not so large, after all, most people photographed by a street photographer don't know anything about it, its very much a matter of approach. At one extreme you have highly invasive street photographers like Bruce Gilden whose approach involves physically jabbing at passers by with a camera and flash and results in pictures of scared people. And at the other extreme you have someone like Beat Streuli who shoots on a long lens from such a great distance that neither he or his pictures have any physical or emotional connection with the subject.
Bruce Gilden on the street
image: Bruce Gilden
image: Beat Streuli
image: Beat Streuli
Despite the fact that I actually quite like Gildens pictures for what they are, I'm not sure what his images tell us beyond what results when a big scary man takes a photograph at the exact moment you think you are about to be knifed or mugged, his pictures record his process not the people of Manhattans streets. Beat Strueli's work is harder for me to like and understand, here is a man who risks nothing on the street, he doesn't risk physical interaction with the street and its people and more importantly he doesn't risk making a decision about editing the scene, his pictures contain no moments or happenings, he literally records the bland and you don't need a camera to see that. (Perhaps someone could help me with this? I would love to here a defence of Struelis work. As someone who shoots on the street, I know these pictures were not difficult to make so write and tell me why I should admire or respect them. I'll post it here)
For me the key word in resolving the photographer/subject conflict is 'empathy'. I believe it is the strong empathy I feel for the strangers I photograph in the street that has prevented me from ever having an unpleasant incident while street shooting, you only have to watch someone for a short amount of time to feel for them and their situation. This brings about a way of working that connects you with people not just subjects and produces candid images of strangers with whom you feel a relationship. The Photographers empathy for the predicament or situation of another human being results in gentle, sensitive and subtle observations. These two images by in-public photographers David Solomons and Matt Stuart are good examples of pictures that sensitively observe the situations of others in the street. They are taken at close quarters and bravely engage with the subject whilst not singling them out in an aggressive way.
image: David Solomons
image: Matt Stuart
Perhaps a discreet, sensitive and empathetic approach not only avoids confrontation but makes you a better street photographer.
For those of you in London Matt Stuart will be showing his work from the 4th February at KKoutlet....info
I wish I’d taken that #2
image: Henry Wessel Jr, Santa Barbara, California, 1977
Henry Wessel shot in California from 1970 onwards and this image from 1977 struck me when I first saw it a few years ago for several reasons, it is carefully created compositionally in a way that draws you in and then keeps your eye framed in the middle, the standing man is caught by the sunlight against a single strip of shadow on the far wall and his own shadow points directly towards the strong vertical of the tree in the middle of the shot which in turn stops the eye, denying you any distant horizon or way out. Also captured in this closed space like a wired cage at the zoo is a flock of birds that seem also to be looking for a way out...although in flight they seem to be static, going knowhere. What I like most is the strange relationship between the Hitchcockian tension of the flock of birds and the casual demeanor of the man who is just standing, hands in pockets, as if he is as bemused by the birds apparent panic as we are. Despite all of this activity and careful framing the picture still has the easy feeling of a casually glanced snap which is certainly a charcteristic of my favorite street photographs. I wish I had taken this photograph.
The Virtually Invisible Street Photographers
It is amazing how invisible a photographer can be these days if he doesn't have a web site, especially if he hales from a non english speaking nation. I recently found, by accident, the work of the Japanese photographer Abe Jun, I took a chance and ordered, from Japan, his book Citizens and have been delighted at his quiet understated vision of Japanese daily life filled with subtle visual echos. I don't believe his work is well known in the west and this is probably due to the lack of any web presence that I have been able to find...he is virtually invisible. Its pretty rare to find a street photographer you didn't know and even rarer when the work is of this standard.
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
This reminded me of another virtually Invisible street photographer, Cristobal Hara whose book Vanitas is one of the best books of street imagery ever published but without a web presence his work fails to get the audience and recognition it deserves. Late at night after a few drinks I sat in the back of a yellow cab in NYC with Cristobal and the NYC street photographer Gus Powell trying to persuade Cristobal to let us show his work on in-public. To my delight, he agreed...only to change his mind a few weeks later. Whilst I respect his decisions, it seems a shame that his work is not as available to inspire us as that of so many less qualified street photographers. A google image search reveals little of Cristobal's wonderfully colorful, surreal and ambiguous imagery.
image: Cristobal Hara
image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Vanitas is available from Schaden and Citizens through Japan Exposures
Visit my books page for my street photography 'must own' books list.
Tod Papageorge 40 year old out-takes
Earlier in the year I received in my inbox some rather nice images taken on one day by Tod Papageorge at the Alabama-Auburn foortball game, in Birmingham, Alabama in November 1970. Tod had received a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant and had chosen sport and its role in American life as his subject. 1970 was a watershed year for public opinion against the Vietnam war which cast a grave historical shadow over the project. The project was published by Aperture in the book American Sports, 1970 The publishers statement says:
"Each and every picture is electric with disquiet. Military men in uniform parade across a field or relax in the stands. Cheerleaders rehearse beneath the gaze of the police. A couple sprawls and embraces in the debris of the Indianapolis 500. And hundreds of fans are drawn in unsettling group portraits at various stadiums and in the stands of many classic American sporting events. Papageorge eloquently and palpably captures the civic and psychic distress of the time on the faces of his subjects and in their gestures and interactions"
Apart from the interest of seeing the young Jackson Five and Duke Ellington in attendance in these pictures, it certainly ads significance while viewing them to bear in mind that while cultural and sporting life continued in the US over 58,000 young American men lost their lives in Vietnam, 6,081 in the year these pictures were made alone. Most of the people in these images will go home from the football field to see the latest death tole on the evening news. Accompanying the pictures below, Tod wrote: "They're out-takes from my book, of course, or, more precisely negatives that I never even scanned for the book. Since I expect that most, if not all, of them will never see the light of day" Well here they are...seeing the light of day.
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
Winogrand speaking at MIT in 1974
I got an email from Tod Papageorge today with a link to a nice audio interview with Garry Winogrand introduced by Tod himself...he says "This is the Garry Winogrand I remember--much more than the video versions floating around the web from 7-8 years later. Worth listening to all the way through"
Thanks Tod, I love it. Listen here.
I loved this quote about the nature of a photograph "If there's such a thing as truth, its a lie"
A good read & A good story
Phil Coomes over at BBC online has a nice story this morning about Steve Harrison and the photographs he took in the 70's and 80's about "his deep outrage about society and the gap between the rich and poor", the story is particularly touching because Steve died last year from Prostate cancer and his work was brought to Phil's attention by Steve's adopted daughter Rosie. Steve's pictures of the poor and homeless of society somehow manage to avoid the cliche's that can often arise and many are wonderful stand alone street images.
image: Steve Harrison
Johanna Neurath and Stephen McLaren, two of the conspirators behind Thames and Hudson's forthcoming survey of contemporary street photography, Street Photography Now, sent me a link to a wonderfully written article on the blog of cinematographer John Bailey titled Street-Wise: The Photography of Garry Winogrand and Alexey Titarenko in which Bailey compares the work and approach of these two, quite different, photographers of the street. It makes one consider their work but also ones own and the nature of photography all together....Its a treat.
The Future of Photo books?
Having just entered the world of publishing with my first photography magazine PUBLICATION, I view with interest the debate about the future of photography books and publishing initiated by Livebooks in conjunction with Andy Adams at Flak Foto. They are asking the general photography and publishing community “What will photobooks be like in the year 2019?" and asking us all to contribute to a 'crowd sourced' answer. The more interesting ideas and predictions will be gathered and linked to here. This is in its early stages by all accounts but already taking part is Adam Westbrook, Eyecurious and there are related posts by Ocular Octopus and Jorg Colberg.
So here is my modest, fairly uninformed, contribution to the discussion: My choosing this year to publish PUBLICATION was not random, I felt that we have all spent a lot of time over the last ten years seeing the massive expansion of the web as a tool for photographers to share their work, promote their practices and produce new multimedia and socialmedia ways of disseminating their photographs, Magnum in Motion and Mediastorm are good examples of organisations using this but individuals like Andrew Hetherington , Brian Ulrich and Amy Stein have all used the web very effectively as a gallery/folio and tool to communicate and promote themselves.
So why would we ever want paper books again? The publication of a book or even a magazine is an event, it can be time stamped by its publication date, registered globally by its ISBN and its essays and articles can be referenced by future writers and commentators. The edit and order of a books photographs are literally bound and they represent decisions made by the photographer or editor at the time...the published photographic book is a landmark in the cultural and historical development of photography. Take a random example like Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects, the pictures and essay by Andy Grundberg now represent a snapshot, not only of America at the time but photography at the time. A great deal has changed in America and photography since 1987 when American Prospects was first published but the book itself is a reference point, a cultural way marker.
1980's America is encapsulated in Sternfelds 'American Prospects'
This was brought home to me when I received a letter from the British Library in London requesting a copy of the first edition of PUBLICATION magazine for their archives, the first dedicated street photography magazine has now, already, two weeks after its launch, become part of that cultural history, its contributors essays and photographs have become part of the 'bound' record.
The smell of the ink This brings me inevitably on to the photographic book as object, the weight, the size, the texture, the smell of the ink, the style of the binding and the fact that its a self contained whole which you can own and keep and develop a relationship with over the years...It is a coveted artefact. “A photobook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things ‘in themselves’ and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book.” –Dutch Historian Ralph Prins Darius Himes agrees... "Books, as physical objects, are indispensable to our collective history—no electricity is required to access them—and they are indelibly printed onto our consciousness from early on. If you can show me just one five-year-old who has, instead of a favorite bedtime book, a favorite PDF, then I’ll believe that books, made of paper and ink, will disappear." "The market for the book-as-object is getting more firmly established every passing auction season. And more and more artists, not just photographers, are seeing the book as a central means of expression. Concurrently, more and more curators and galleries are seeing books as a central means of expression." Although internet blogs are extraordinary tools for sharing opinions, commentating, criticising and developing ideas like us all here, now, trying to decide 'What will photobooks be like in the year 2019?', they cannot replace the photographic book as a loved object...I read aphotoeditor.com most days but I wouldn't swap it for my copy of 'The Americans'. I think the future will see two things, a greater experimentation with the traditional printed format of photographic publishing and the development of a symbiotic relationship between the paper and digital product.
Innovating with the photo book format I can see photographers presenting their work like artists books, more limited editions, more accompanying prints or print boxes, less of an adherence to the format of the bound book with two end covers. This is something that I have tried to do with PUBLICATION magazine, producing a box that contains 22 unbound prints, like a small exhibition, and an accompanying booklet of related essays...a simillar format is used by Shane Lavalette's wonderful Lay Flat.
Lay Flat comes in 21 parts
At Paris Photo last month I bought Hans Eijkelbooms Paris-New York-Shanghai published by Aperture which is in the format of three small books, one for each city, each with hard covers, joined together to make a single large book. Whilst I found Eijkelbooms vernacular photography a bit monotonous, the format of the book was refreshingly engaging.
3 into 1, Hans Eijkelbooms Paris-New York-Shanghai
The 'Printernet' model We published PUBLICATION in a numbered edition of 2000 which means that when they are shortly all sold out the images and texts will no longer be publicly available. We plan to publish the essays on the magazines web site at some point after the edition is sold, perhaps when we publish edition #2 in May 2010. I can see the printed and digital elements of PUBLICATION complimenting each other in this way as we go forward, the printed magazine on sale for six months whilst the essays from previous editions are archived and made available online. We are also using the web site to invite submissions from street photographers around the world and if the standard is high enough we will regularly publish an edition of images contributed in this way...PUBLICATION will become a product of the interaction between its editor, its contributors, the printed product, its web presence and the people who buy, read and submit their work to it. I would suggest that photographic publishing in the future, particularly in the magazine arena, will involve this sort of two way relationship between the product and the community it serves. I look forward to reading the conclusions of other bloggers on the future of photo publishing and thank Andy Adams at Flak for inviting sevensevennine to participate. My apologies for mentioning my own magazine so frequently but the issues involved are obviously fresh in our minds at the PUBLICATION London office. One of the joys of financing and publishing your own magazine is that you don't have to adhere to any rules and you can innovate and experiment in ways that large publishers are not so free to do.
Update 14th Dec: Darius Himes, Amy Stein and Alec Soth join the discussion.
This is a function that it is difficult for a slideshow or blog on a website that is held on a server somewhere, to perform, the binary code is intangible and vanishes with the failing of a hard drive, it is not archived or easily referenced and struggles to stand as a solid cultural artifact.
Darius Himes from 'Who Cares About Books' on Words Without Pictures
Darius Himes of Radius Books interviewed on aphotoeditor
I wish I’d taken that #1
Cairo 1973, Harry Callahan from the book Harry Callahan Colour
An Ad agency Creative Director gave me Harry Callahan Color after seeing my street photography portfolio, It wasn't until recently that I realised what gems of street photography it held. This beautiful color image shot in the warm light at one end of the day shows a wonderful tableau of figures stretched almost equidistantly across the frame. They all appear to be waiting, presumably for a bus that is overdue judging by their numbers. Above the people the frame juggles a large number of signs all kept in the air at the same time. The composition is very geometric except for a bent and leaning tree that gathers the eye in the top left corner like a hundred tributaries that gather your attention and guide you down the trunk into the main flow of the picture. One man stands off the pavement in the road his long shadow stretching behind him as he looks down the road. This photograph is busy and cluttered but still and ordered, above all it is beautiful......I wish I'd taken this photograph.
PUBLICATION hits the streets
In March this year I wrote an email to a small group of writers, photographers and designers expressing my belief that the world was ready for its first real street photography magazine, we were in the second worst financial crisis of the century and it seemed kind of dumb to be starting any new venture....but then if I wanted things easy, I wouldn't be a street photographer at all.
I felt that I wasn't the only one who would enjoy holding photographs again as objects rather than always seeing them on a two dimensional back lit monitor and so formed the idea for the format for a new magazine. I contacted two young designers Pali Palavathanan and Eng Su who I admired and asked them to design me a magazine and a brand for our, so far, un-named magazine...
I told them the publication should be: small
This was my first experience of self publishing and I was extremely naive about what was involved, I and my long suffering project manager Sarah Ewing went on a journey of discovery through the process of design and the alchemy of printing. Sarah took on an enormous workload in producing the magazine while I was traveling europe on a commission and not always available to make decisions. While she was doing a lot of the logistical organising, I had the pleasure of researching contemporary street photography to find our first edit of twenty-two images that would reflect the wide range of possible approaches to shooting in public places. I was delighted when Michael David Murphy, David Gibson and Hin Chua agreed to write about inspiration from their perspectives and I enjoyed writing about the image by Joel Meyerowitz that had first inspired me to make pictures of life on the streets.
We still had no name and were always referring to the magazine as 'the publication' because it wasn't a traditional magazine bound format...eventually, of course, the name stuck.....PUBLICATION seemed the perfect name for a magazine of images from public places.
So it was a big day for our small team when PUBLICATION went on sale on Monday this week and we are all delighted that most people seem as pleased with it as we are.
PUBLICATION #1 Inspiration
I think it is a small landmark for the recognition, development and celebration of street photography which comes just ahead of the 10th anniversary of in-public and a great twelve months for street photography especially in the UK with the FORMAT photography festival next year focusing on street photography and the very exciting publication of Thames and Hudson's Street Photography Now book.
It is our intention to regularly produce an edition of PUBLICATION featuring images submitted through the web site, this is likely to be every third edition so get over there and upload your most striking street image, you might even win a copy of a Winogrands 1964.
Finally, thank you to the hundreds of people who have already secured one of the 2000 numbered editions of the magazine and submitted their images, your support is invaluable to the continuation of the PUBLICATION project.
cool
simple
contemporary
accessible
understated
underground
influential
precious
collectable
a benchmark
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