sevensevennine.com | nick turpin on street photography

Museum Street Photography Acquisition

Nick — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:39:33 +0000













This morning I have heard that following the Museum of London's Street Photography show opening in February 2011, the Museum will be acquiring prints from members of the in-public Street Photographers group for the Museums permanent photography collection.
I think this is a hugely significant development and am delighted that those dedicated photographers that have recorded public life in the UK over the last decade as well as Street Photography itself, is being recognised in this way.
Images are to be acquired by in-public's David Solomons, David Gibson, Richard Bram, Nils Jorgensen, Matt Stuart, Nick Turpin, Paul Russell and others including Stephen McLaren.






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Watching the ball, missing the game.
Nick — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:23:26 +0000






I have written before that, for me, one of the great strengths of Street Photography is the chance of recording something instinctively, almost without thought, I sighted one of my own images of a fleeing mugger as an example of a picture that was made so quickly that I only knew that 'something' was happening when I pushed the shutter. I have also written about the blinkers one wears when out on the street shooting a project or subject, the loss of openness to all comers, the way the brain intervenes and you lose that 'mugger catching' instinct.
I recently came across an amusing demonstration of the way the brain misses things when it is engaged in looking for something else, how distracted it becomes by the task, the subject....at the cost of general awareness and openness.













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Still no Street Photography
Nick — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:18:29 +0000






Let me ask you a question.






Why is it that there is no contemporary Street Photography held in the collections of major museums and galleries in the UK?






Tate Gallery?   No.
Victoria & Albert?   No.
Museum of London?   No.
National Media Museum Bradford?  No.






The aquisition of Street Photography at these institutions ended with Tony Ray Jones, Roger Mayne and Paul Trevor twenty years or more ago.
Perhaps the answer is a financial one, perhaps it is a matter of fashions or perhaps it is simply that in the UK we still haven't reached the point, as happened in America decades ago, where photographers working with small handheld cameras are taken seriously. A whole generation of young British Photographers have spent the last decade recording life on the streets of London and the UK completely unrecognised and unsupported by its institutions and curators. They've worked unfunded, with no grants or bursaries and yet their images represent a valuable candid record of British society that no UK gallery or museum has acknowledged, shown or bought.












Nils Jorgensen, London.






Nick Turpin, London.






Matt Stuart, London.






David Solomons, London.






Stephen McLaren, London.






Paul Russell, Bournemouth.






Adrian Fisk, London.






David Gibson, London.






Kate Hooper, London.






Maciej Dakowicz, Cardiff.












I can't help thinking that if the work of this generation of Street Photographers fails to end up in a national collection, then someone somewhere is not doing their job.






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Arles Photo Festival
Nick — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:20:45 +0000






I swung by Arles last week to see the Photo Festival for the first time and what a pleasure it was. Arles provides a beautifully informal venue for photographers, writers, publishers, curators and assorted hangers on to discuss photography over a beer and cook up a few ideas. Wearing both my Photography and Publishing hats I got to chat with people like Tim Clarke from 1000wordsmag, Simon Baker new photography curator at Tate, Dewi Lewis publisher and meet some long time inspirations of mine like Martin Kollar. I hung out with Nathalie Belayche of 'Food for your Eyes', drank Champagne by the hotel pool with FORMAT festival Director Louise Clements, talked Street Photography books with Johanna Neurath from Thames and Hudson and caught up with my old Independent Newspaper colleague Andrew Buurman.






image: Nick Turpin  Place de La Republique, Arles






There was a lot of work exhibited and projected that was just 'not for me', I enjoyed seeing it but It was so stylised as to have lost any connection it may have had with the world I recognise, the work triggers an emotional response but that response leads knowhere because you don't know what it is you are looking at, I'm thinking of the work of Antoine D' Agata and Paulo Pellegrin that contain blurred and out of focus figures, distorted faces and bodies reminiscent of the paintings of Francis Bacon. I know I am out of step with popular opinion with this view but I find this work indulgent and self obsessed.

  The projections in the Antique Theater were often similar, black and white documentary projects so vignetted that the image appears to be viewed through a dark tunnel. The angst displayed in these pictures seems less about the subjects of them than that of documentary photography itself as it wrestles with its uncomfortable new position as Art.






I found it interesting that at the end of the week the work that had inspired me most was 25 years old, the new curation by William A Ewing of the work of Ernst Haas which is soon to be a Steidl book. The Haas work looked contemporary and beautiful, and for the first time during the week I was looking at images I wish I had taken.






Image: Ernst Haas






Always on the lookout for Street Photographs, I found just two interesting events, a nightly projection of Street Photography by a group called Antenne whose communications leave a little to be desired, I was able to discover virtually nothing about them despite the fact that in-public photographers were taking part.






Antenne projection featuring in-public's Nils Jorgensen






....and a small exhibition of Street Photography by Jan Meissner from NYC who shoots graphic color scenes of the New York sidewalk often take parallel to the buildings which had a continuity of approach that I liked. Some of the images seem to be unnecessarily manipulated but nevertheless display a good eye for a photographer who has, I understand, only been shooting for a couple of years.






image: Jan Meissner






image: Jan Meissner






image: Jan Meissner






image: Jan Meissner






It was an intense week and I was happy to get in my Jeep and head South at the end of it but I will definitely be back next year.
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What’s in 10?
Nick — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:10:13 +0000






Nathalie Belayche of 'Food For Your Eyes' kindly invited in-public to show a selection from their 10th anniversary book 10 at the Paris Slideluck Potshow event on the 23rd June.



















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China Between
Nick — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:18:55 +0000






More book news...on the same night that in-public launched its 10 book at Photofusion, Polly Braden was launching her book China Between at The Photographers Gallery. Polly kindly sent me a copy of the book that is published by Dewi Lewis and contains 63 color photographs taken by Polly over a decade in China. The book also contains texts by Pollys husband David Campany who is reader in Photography at the University of Westminster and by Jennifer Higgie who is co-editor of the London-based contemporary arts magazine, Frieze. The book has some connection with The Arts Council of England but it is not clear what that is.
The hardback book is traditionally but nicely designed and the image reproduction is very good. The covers feature the faces of two of the women in Pollys photographs painted by Tim Braden, it is not immediately apparent how this is relevant to the contents or aims of the book though.






The painted cover of Polly Bradens book China Between by Tim Braden






I have found it very difficult to come to a conclusion about this book, it contains some very beautiful and atmospheric images, many taken in dim artificial light which imbue a strong sense of place. The images are extremely varied in quality from page to page however and many rely on your flipping to the back of the book for the caption to give them their relevance. I would have liked to have seen more images that stood alone both aesthetically and in terms of their meaning, few of the images in China Between are self contained, they require the company of the others and the book format to work. This feeling is starkly illustrated when you do turn the page and come across one of the gems that are certainly hidden in the book, 'Night walk, Xiamen, September 2007' shows an elderly woman walking with a stick, her arm appears to be bandaged and in a sling as she passes down a very contemporary looking, recently constructed, shopping street. She is framed beautifully by the lighting and a dark area of wet road that almost holds her in place, she seems to be contemplating the crossing of this simple barrier to her journey. One imagines this neighborhood has changed dramatically during her lifetime and she seems out of time with the western dresses in the shop windows beside her. Life seems hard for her as she carries both her groceries and walking stick in her remaining good hand. 






Night walk, Xiamen, September 2007.






In this image Polly has kept a number of plates spinning at the same time, it tells her Chinese story but not at the cost of being a great image, its beautiful, meaningful and self contained and as such is a great Street Photograph. There are a number of images like this in the book but, for me, not enough.






Xiamen, August 2007
This image of a young woman on a mobile telephone is another good example, its composed, the play of scale works nicely, she is diminutive in the frame beneath a large tree and wall. Behind her is a view through the wall to the street beyond, she squats, her hands to her temples in concentration. You sense she has sought out this quiet spot amongst the oppressive noise of the city to make her call, the shot conveys its message beautifully, there is no need to flick to the index and read the caption.






Restaurant staff gather for a pep talk, Xiamen, July 2007






I was particularly taken by a paragraph of David Campany's text that resonates with me because It describes very succinctly the unique strength of Street Photography to show us our own lives, he writes:
"Modern streets have a particular way of registering transition. They belong neither to 'home' nor to 'work'. They are communal and yet official, very public but private too. The street is where little truths point to larger ones if you can attune yourself. The way human bodies tell of the conditions of work. The way faces carry or attempt to mask history. The way the very fabric of the street attests to the pace of things. The way signs, clothes and even moods are the result of minor and major forces"






If you are versed with the genre of Street Photography you will be disappointed by this book, it does not contain the visual wit, cleverness or consistency of similar books such as Alex Webb's book about Istanbul City of a Hundred Names. If you are interested in China and its extraordinary development and change and what that looks like at street level rather than in photographs of its grand industrial projects then you will enjoy China Between. I bought Alex Webb's Istanbul book as much for his photographic dexterity and vocabulary as I did to see what Istanbul was like. For me at least China Between is a book about China rather than a book about photographs of China but in that context it is very successful. 






China Between is available to buy on Pollys site.
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Street Photography in print
Nick — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:58:22 +0000






Until last month there was only one published book 'about' Street Photography, there were books about particularly productive eras of American photography including the three books by Sally Eauclair (American Independents, The New Color Photography and New Color New Work) that deal with the explosion of American color photography in the eighties and more recent publications like Gilles Mora's nostalgic Last Photographic Heros and Kevin Moore's Starburst which is worth getting just for the Mitch Epstein colour plates. 






Mitch Epstein, Madison Avenue, NYC, 1973






Mitch Epstein, Topanga Canyon, California 1974






But really there is only the collaboration by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck, that really sets the scene for Street Photographers, their Bystander: A History of Street Photography first published in 1994 and reprinted with a new afterword in 2001 has become the reference point for a generation of young Street Photographers. Bystander records the family tree and whilst it includes many who would never have considered themselves to be Street Photographers, they certainly are by our retrospective interpretation of the meaning of that phrase.






Bystander: A History of Street Photography






Effectively it has been 16 years since the last and only compilation of Street Photography was published and 9 years since its updated version that actually included the work of contemporary working Street Photographers. Because Street Photography hasn't been exhibited, it hasn't been understood by a popular audience and publishers have considered that there are no customers for books of Street Photography. Of course there is a growing and thriving community of Street Photographers but no publisher has been prepared to lead the way and publish street images for the street community.
As many of you will now be aware 2010 brings to an end a decade long drought in the publication of Street Photography with the publication of two books, in-public's 10 and Thames and Hudsons Street Photography Now written by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren. Both books are the result of the small but enthusiastic group of Street Photographers that have formed in London in the last ten years. Certainly the in-public group has been at the center of this but people like Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren have been very active in writing about and curating Street Photography, it was Sophie who invited in-public to run workshops at Tate Modern and subsequently The School of Life and it was Stephen who put together 'Onto The Streets' at Photofusion in November of 2006. It is pretty certain that Thames and Hudson's new book would not have been produced were it not for the passion for Street Photography of their senior designer Johanna Neurath.
So why now in 2010?
Maybe there is the beginning of a return to a place were photographs are again 'taken' rather than 'made', were respect is returning for the ability to take a good photograph as opposed to talk a good photograph, photographers are again recognising the raw nature of the medium to record and communicate the subtlest of emotional charges, what I heard Phillip Jones Griffiths refer to as the elusive photographic orgasm. Our obsession with innovating the medium and experimenting with it has only taught of its limitations and I believe there is now a generation of photographers who understand that and are eager to work in that sweet spot where photography simply does what it does best. SFMOMA in April held a summit titled 'Is Photography Over' but the photography they seemed to be referring to was the photography that deals with itself, the navel gazing 'What photography is, does, and means?' kind of photography. I think the photographers that will now take the stage are those that realise photography is just the tool and is not in fact the subject. In many ways the best photographs I know, the ones with the emotional punch in the stomach, the ones that make my mind whurr trying to enter their psychological space are not the over intellectual creations of art course graduates but unretouched works of instinct by photographers who release the shutter when their heart jumps through their chest. If you need to stand up in front of a projected slide of your work explaining it for twenty minutes or if I need to read an essay about your intent before viewing it then you've failed to understand what photography is good at...for you 'Photography Is Over'.
I think it is a rejection of the over conceptualised, manipulated and appropriated photograph that we will now see, they were fun games while they lasted, like pop art they have lost their shock value, I see a return to the document, a return to the record, a return to the sweet spot inherent of the medium itself.












'10' from Nick Turpin Publishing
More information and pictures here


















Price including shipping
























'Street Photography Now' from Thames and Hudson
Available to pre order here












The launch of in-public's 10th anniversary book and exhibition took place at Photofusion in London on the 27th May, it was great to see Street Photography exhibited and published in this way and especially great to see so many of our friends from the burgeoning London scene. The exhibition continues until the 9th July 2010.






Opening of 'in-public@10' at Photofusion, London.






Opening of 'in-public@10' at Photofusion, London.






Opening of 'in-public@10' at Photofusion, London.












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in-public @ 10
Nick — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:36:59 +0000






In January of 2000 I was shooting on the streets of London on a regular basis, mainly in black and white on a Leica M6. My work was processed by a lab in West London called Flash and the dark room printer there was Simon van Coervorden who had worked at The Independent Newspapers darkroom previously. During one of my visits Simon showed me some prints he was doing for a photographer called David Gibson, who also made pictures on the street and in black and white. Gibsons work was witty and carefully observed with an edge of melancholy to many of his images of older people. 






images: David Gibson






I invited David to visit my home and I took him for some lunch to talk about his work, I was struck by how quiet and unassuming he was, he barely spoke...and yet he had this wonderful talent with a camera. I pretty much decided over that meal to start in-public. It was very early days for the internet then and I had to teach myself the basics of html in order to get the first in-public.com site up and running with just two portfolios, mine and David Gibsons. The first in-public site was like lighting a fire on a dark mountain top, it sent a signal and other Street Photographers quickly got in touch, within the first year seven more portfolios of street photography were added to the site as we made contact with street shooters in Australia and then America. This was an exciting time, we had the sense of being a real community, we were all out shooting daily in different parts of the world and shared our pictures on the groups private discussion board, it was like having a nightly crit of your work from a peer group you really respected. I would get out of bed in the morning and log on to see what the Australians had posted overnight before I even took a piss.













in-public.com site in November 2001






Within a short few years in excess of 40,000 people a month were viewing our work online at the in-public.com site and we were asked by Tate Modern to teach Street Photography workshops to the public, magazines got in touch to publish our work, The Discovery Channel asked me to do a program on Street Photography, BBC radio came out on the streets to find out what it was all about, I went to Yale School of Art to talk about Street Photography. Suddenly there was a new generation of Street Photographers and although the gallery and publishing world was still focused on conceptual work, staged narrative images and Dusseldorf School imitators, we didn't really care, we were shooting our work and reaching a wide and growing audience.....that was the nature of Street Photography, it was marginal and subversive in it's shooting style and in the presentation of its work. 






in-public members joining dates:
1. Nick Turpin (2000)

2. David Gibson (2000)

3. Richard Bram (2001)

4. Matt Stuart (2001)

5. Andy Morley-Hall (2001)

6. Trent Parke (2001)

7. Narelle Autio (2001)

8. Jesse Marlow (2001)

9. Adrian Fisk (2001)

10. Nils Jorgensen (2002)

11. Melanie Einzig (2002)

12. Jeffrey Ladd (2003)

13. Amani Willett (2003)

14. Gus Powell (2003)

15. Christophe Agou (2005)

16. Otto Snoek (2006)

17. Blake Andrews (2006)

18. David Solomons (2008)

19. George Kelly (2010)

20. Paul Russell (2010)






Now in 2010 in-public's numbers have swollen to 20 members and our anniversary seems to coincide with a revival of interest in this way of working, we are all very excited about the publication by Thames and Hudson of 'Street Photography Now' in October which will include a number of in-public photographers.






 






Street Photography Now from Thames & Hudson out in October 2010






It is fantastic that the UK's FORMAT photography festival in 2011 will be themed around Street Photography and in-public will be there showing new work at Derby's Art Gallery and Museum.






 






FORMAT2011 Right Here, Right Now exposures from the public realm.....more info

Get involved by submitting for the festival here.






Our own activities this year are kicked off on the 27th May at London's Photofusion when we gather to open our exhibition 'in-public @ 10' with work from all 20 members.













I think the text that accompanies the exhibition captures well the current mood:






For some, the phrase 'Street Photography' is a troublesome word, associated with romantic notions of the past, hackneyed and full of cliches. For the photographers of the in-public collective it remains a specific, unique and powerful approach to picturing the subtleties of life in our age. 

Since its establishment by Nick Turpin in January 2000 in-public has provided a focal point for the current generation of Street Photographers around the world. Its photographers on four continents have demonstrated that, despite being as old as photography itself, Street Photography remains as relevant as at anytime in the last century. 
What is Street Photography? Nick Turpin has argued that in some sense we are all Street Photographers: 
"Street Photography is just Photography in its simplest form – it is the medium itself. It is actually all the other forms of photography that need defining. Landscape, fashion, portrait, reportage, art, advertising....these are all complicating additions to the medium of Photography. These are the areas that need to be defined, ring-fenced and partitioned out of the medium of Street Photography." 
Whilst photographers have played conceptually with the medium's inherent ambiguity and stretched the photograph's relationship with a real event or scene to breaking point, we always seem to return to the basic power of the camera to record. Nowhere is that recording of the documents of life more profound than in the work of the Street Photographer. Here are people who go out into a public place without research or preconception of ideas and respond instinctively to what is revealed to them. Their pictures, choreographed by chance, in little fragments show us our modern lives. 
When famine, war and civil strife command the attention of the majority of documentary photographers, it is crucial that we don't lose sight of the decisions we have made as societies at home. Images made on Oxford Street, 5th Avenue or in the local park by Street Photographers place our own daily lives under the microscope and reveal our values. 
The last ten years has seen Street Photography become popular on the internet, been discussed on national television and radio, been written about in national newspapers and taught to the public at Tate Modern. The members of in-public have played a major role in this revival and their images in this exhibition are evidence of the continuing power of Street Photography to deal with the present. It is this current generation of Street Photographers that will now define and shape the future of this enduring genre.






Nick Turpin Publishing will also be launching a beautiful hardback book containing 200 images and an interview with each in-public photographer as well as an essay about the nature of cities by the Guardians architecture and design critic Jonathan Glancey.







Send us an email to be notified when the book is available to purchase.






If you are a beginner and would like to get involved you can join my two day Street Photography workshop for the School of Life in June...
Whichever way you look at it, it's a Street Photography year!






UPDATE 20th May:
The Museum of London will also put on a Street Photography exhibition in spring of 2011, the show will be based around the museums collection of historic work but also contain a section on contemporary practice looking at the impact of digital technology, the internet and recent legislation, curator of photographs Mike Seabourne said "Given the current interest in street photography and the issues surrounding its pursuit, it seems timely to look at how photographers have worked in the street”. More information here.






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Is There a Way of Approaching The Street ?
Nick — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:20:34 +0000






  'Is There a Way of Approaching The Street?' is the title of a panel discussion taking place on the 7th May at the PM Gallery in West London to accompany the exhibition of Raymond Depardons 'Cities' project. Paul Halliday, Photographer and Goldsmiths Lecturer, will chair a panel discussion with the photographers Rut Blees Luxemburg, Simon Rowe, Nick Turpin and Markéta Luskačová.






  The event is informal and the audience is invited to participate. Doors open 7pm. Tickets: £5. Please call (020) 8567 1227 after 1pm to book. The exhibition runs from Friday 23 April until Sunday 20 June 2010....more details here.






  If you're thinking of attending you could get yourself up to speed with some of the history of the issues by reading Sean O' Hagan's recent article in the Guardian.






image: Raymond Depardon from Cities ©Magnum






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What was the Subject?
Nick — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:57:22 +0000






Most of us are familiar with the form of street photography but what is its subject? I think most of the respected street photographers I know would suggest that if you go out to make pictures with a subject in mind then you close your mind to opportunities that could have resulted in that revealing unexpected moment we all seek. Having a subject means you are suddenly looking for something specific and your mind gets involved somewhere between the initial stimulus and the making of a picture, that second of hesitant reviewing thought can cost you the shot. Can you maintain that loss of self, that zen like connection with events and happenings around you that so many street photographers report, if you are consciously looking for something that meets the criteria of the subject you have set yourself.
I initially agree with this thesis but then when I look back over my work from the streets, many of my best images have arisen because I was doing a little project I had set myself, images from the City of London that arose because I had been attracted to that environment and had returned there repeatedly over a couple of years or images that I made after 9/11 when I found myself attracted to airline ticket offices.






Street Scene, Financial District, London from 'Trading Life' pic: Nick Turpin






Street Scene, Picadilly, London from 'Un-Civil Aircraft' pic: Nick Turpin






Having a 'loose' subject can really focus and inspire you as long as it is something that gives you plenty of scope within it to be an observer, clearly there is a huge difference between a project about 'London's West End' and one about 'Female Circumcision in Africa'....and this is what makes me nervous about this discussion, it has always been the lack of a subject that has in many ways separated the street photographer from the photojournalist or reportage photographer. The main difference is that the street images are much more spontaneous, surprising and unexpected because of the very fact that the photographer was not mentally editing his subject matter as he went along, he was simply reacting to quickly changing circumstances. An example of this that I often site is the picture of the mugger that I took in the City of London while shooting my 'Trading Life' series:






Street Scene, Financial District, London from 'Trading Life' pic: Nick Turpin






Because my subject/project was very 'loose' and only required me to shoot in a certain area of London I remained open to all comers photographically, I allowed the street to show me what it had.

If I had shot the Stock Exchange, Commuters and Champagne bars the pictures would have been very predictable and the 'Mugger' would never have been recorded.






The American Street Photographer Jeff Mermelstein produced a book called Twirl/Run which contained two series of images, one of girls twirling their hair and the other of people running in the street, his gallerists web site says of the project
"The genesis of Twirl / Run is simple. It was borne from the periodic review and reorganization of the photographer’s archive of images – a typical exercise for any prolific photographer. Scouring through thousands of negatives, Mermelstein began to see a pattern forming where unconsciously he had been photographing these two gestures for years, beginning in 1995."






Run #4 2003 pic: Jeff Mermelstein courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York.






Twirl #7 pic: Jeff Mermelstein courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York.






The slow emergence of subjects in your work seems to be the street photographers way, the street reveals itself to you through the act of making pictures and as time goes on themes and patterns often emerge in the resulting pictures and as you become aware of these 'subjects' you find yourself seeing them more often and actually looking out for them. You end up with a project you didn't know you wanted.






The Melbourne based photographer Jesse Marlow has produced a body of work of people in the street with apparent injuries which resulted in the book 'Wounded'. Jesse's work is very much street based so I asked him how he arrived at shooting a very specific 'subject'.






"About 10 years ago I hurt my arm after a game of drunken football with friends and as a result had my arm in a sling for a couple of weeks.

Unable to take photos I kept seeing people in similar situations going about their daily routines. Like when you buy a new car all you see for the next few months on the road is that same model car.
I took a couple of photos of people with arms in slings and slowly the idea came into my head about it being a long term project.
Over the next year or so I shot a few more here and there as I came across them. They weren't great photos from memory but the idea of it becoming a project wouldn't go away.
I then showed some colleagues (the in-public discussion board) and was given a lot of encouragement from the other members. It was then that I really started thinking about it as a serious project....
The next 2 years of my life were spent shooting hundreds and hundreds of wounded people out on the streets.
I was hooked and obsessed, it's all I shot. It became unhealthy to the rest of my street work as everywhere I went all I saw was wounded people.
I became an expert at spotting someone with bandage in a crowd.
The project was all about showing how resilient human beings are. Despite suffering from superficial injuries, most people dust themselves off and get on with life.
The challenge for me photographically was: good looking injury vs good photo, as most of the photos I took were fairly straight forward - man / woman with arm in sling walking down the street.
Finding people in situations that complemented or contradicted their physical position was a fun thing to be looking for out on the street. It was a really disciplined way of shooting
Towards the end I started seeing large scenes with more than one wounded person in it. This was for me the most rewarding part and a great way to finish the project.
It was one of those projects that I could have shot for another 2 - 5 years but for me and my photography I knew I had had enough.  Looking for such a specific thing became quite restricting so finishing it off became a relief."






From 'Wounded' pic: Jesse Marlow






From 'Wounded' pic: Jesse Marlow






From 'Wounded' pic: Jesse Marlow






There are few who would class London based David Solomons as anything other than a Street Photographer and yet he has completed two subject based series of what I would certainly call Street Photographs, I asked him if having a project was an advantage or a disadvantage for a Street Photographer:






"I learned to shoot in a project format from my time at Newport and the 'Up West' project evolved out of a desire to do something about London at street level after I had shot a similar project on the Underground. London seemed too broad a subject matter for me to tackle easily and as I often found myself drawn to shooting in the west end, the term 'Up West' resonated with me and I decided that that would make a good title for a project/book, so I subsequently concentrated on that area. 

I personally find it is an advantage to shoot specifically for a project for a number of reasons. Firstly it gives me a goal to aim at, a finishing line so to speak. This provides me with a motivation to shoot at something specific, maybe this has something to do with my personality about wanting some sort of order to it, who knows. But I also feel I want to learn as a photographer, so trying to figure out how to develop and complete a project is always for me the greatest challenge. It also gives me a sense of perspective of how I'm maturing as a photographer as well as a person and how good I am at coming up with new ideas and trying out new ways of working. I personally don't feel that working on a particular project blinkers you from shooting other things, though if like me, you tend to use lots of different cameras, the equipment you're using may have some influence as to what other pictures I might be given to taking.
I personally feel it is an advantage to present your work in such a way that it has a clear objective. Publishers and exhibitors are mostly only going to be interested in unconnected images from an individual artist if they're seen as some form of retrospective. 
The great thing about photography is that we can enjoy an individual image as much as a larger body of work, they are like two different animals. The first would look great framed nicely on the wall, whereas the second would be experienced better in a book format. It's rather like yeah I love 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' but it's not the only great song Nirvana ever did and after a while you'll want to listen to the rest of 'Nevermind' along with their other albums. So it's about having a more comprehensive viewing experience, which is why I don't feel any one of my images could communicate everything I wanted to say about the West End and that it works better as a larger project as it gives me more scope to do this."






Coventry Street from Up West by David Solomons






Duncannon Street from Up West by David Solomons






Oxford Street from Up West by David Solomons






In the same way that trying to photograph NYC is overwhelming whilst trying to photograph the corner of 42nd and 5th can be quite productive, having a focus, a hook to hang your picture making on, can make your street shooting more productive. If you find yourself pausing to decide if a picture is going to fit into your project then you've got a big problem as a Street Photographer.
In many ways the general lack of specific subject matter in Street Photography has hindered its dissemination and acceptance by galleries and publishers who like to know what the pictures are 'about', There are very few books of Street Photographs that don't have a strong theme holding them together and yet they rank among my absolute favorites...Jeff Mermelsteins Sidewalk, Martin Kollars Nothing Special, Trent Parkes Dream/Life, Gus Powells The Company of Strangers and Jun Abe's Citizens contain some of the best street images of the last decade. I find it significant of some slight change in attitude that this year a large publisher, Thames and Hudson will release their survey of the contemporary scene, Street Photography Now and my own small publishing company will release '10' containing 200 mostly un-themed images from the in-public group. Neither of us would invest in these publications unless we thought their was now an audience for this work that is largely about nothing and, of course, about everything.






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