British-born photographer Shane Gray talks a little bit about his inspirations and aspirations. Shane will be showing his series of New York City photographs “Avenue Street” at Lunasa (126 First Avenue, New York, NY) until the end of March. The opening will be Tuesday, February 7 from 6 – 9 pm.

Jeanette O’Keefe: Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you found your way to photography?

Shane Gray: Norfolk, in rural England was where I was born – I’m a country boy at heart. But a series of moves to other parts of the country saw me living in four other counties before finally settling in London where I stayed for just over a decade.
As village turned into town and town into city I suppose I gradually became more urbanized. And quite recently I left the United Kingdom to start married life in the United States.

I grew up in the seventies which I suppose was just as popular for photography as in the preceding decades.
My first memory of the ‘family camera’ was of a strange plastic boxy looking thing -it apparently took instant photographs, a total revelation at the time of course. I remember looking through family albums – with the interrupting digits as people grappled with varying contraptions in pursuit of savoring those all-important family moments. So I suppose you could say that it all started within the arena of ‘domestic photography’.
My first camera was made by a popular British chemist and used a tiny format called 110. From that day on I honestly think that something ignited – my first reckoning of what has commonly been termed the ‘decisive moment’, was my feeding a swan trying not to have it confuse my fingers for the chunk of bread. Couple this with the fact that I was always drawing as a child and I guess I became quite visually aware from an early age.

Later an Eastern bloc 35mm camera finally saw me putting my pencils down for good and after some relative successes and a growing stack of 6 X 4 prints, I soon found my way heading towards the city of Sheffield where I was accepted onto a course teaching many aspects of ‘professional photographic competences’. It just happened that the same college ran a press photography course for  the NCTJ (National Center for the Training of Journalists).

I was soon heavily influenced by my busied peers and their gritty B + W prints. Permission was granted to travel with an aid convoy to former Yugoslavia, where the war had not long started, and a growing fascination led me to the renowned Documentary Photography course in Newport, South Wales.

Do you see your personality reflected in your work?

Ultimately, the answer would have to be a resounding yes to this very interesting question – it’s just that the strength of the reflection varies from subject to subject or situation to situation as photographed. Some photographers indicate the complexities within their work as totally curiosity driven, or embark on some aesthetic stance which points to a strong personal influence; a personality trait even, maybe even fetish in some cases. Others appear to distance themselves or at least appear distanced. At times I feel like either photographer, if that makes sense.
When you see emerging patterns or commonalities within your own ways of working there has to be some hinting at the photographers make up or psyche. Even within genres whereby the subject retains all impetus or importance there can still be a suggestion of personality I think.
Experiences in a photographer’s life affect their outlook and interests which in turn affects personality thereby acting as a vector for their own working. As we know there’s that matter of subjectivity of course, but when you look at the work of photographers such as Parr, Gilden or Mermelstein they seem to give off strong signals alluding to their true personality.

All photographers do at some point and I’m no exception.

As someone who works in an art museum, I am interested in a photographer’s influences. Your work has a very strong aesthetic to it – bright colors, bold shapes – and it seems you have a clear idea of what you like to photograph. Do you have any influences in the photography world, art world or any other world that you can tell us about?

Having spent some time in Arts Education in London (post degree), though only at a fairly ordinary level, I have certainly looked at artists work with a view to it influencing my photography and maybe on a less conscious level it has. Cross-visioning is something that I feel truly exists for anyone involved with any artistic endeavor. The color usage of Pablo Picasso (especially in emotional terms) or the feelings of angst with Edvard Munch, even the abstraction of Joan Miro, I would never discount a smaller influence on some level.

However, the Photographers who have influenced and inspired me along the way; these luminary figures are innumerable and mentioning all of them possibly may go beyond the scope of this interview – it would be a long winded answer for sure. As I’ve gone about my photographic practice there have been many influences either from a genre perspective or chosen method of approach; be it B + W or color or chosen format even. Then there are the time periods involved throughout the history of photography as well. Probably the most notable in contemporary color working and in either ‘street’ or documentary would be Alex Webb for his sophisticated arrangement of picture elements, keen sense of observation, and color appreciation. Martin Parr I very much respect for his sensibility in the observations he makes; his social commentary either on my motherland or someone else’s I find both astute and amusing. Joel Meyerowitz – again the complexity of his street work I love but at the same time his photographs really inspire because of his mastery in juxtaposing form often interjected with emotion or questions.

Picking up on personality again though – Bruce Gilden, I admire for his ‘chutzpah’ – his spirit in getting done what he wants, and the same with Jeff Mermelstein, apart from their work, it’s their modus operandi that inspires too. Constantine Manos is another photographer who I quite admire, his use of shadow and color combined I love to observe. Lastly but definitely no less importantly Lauren Greenfield and Mary Ellen Mark have influenced on some levels as they have gotten ‘closer’ to some of their subjects more than many others – investing both time and understanding it appears. Their intuition and sensitivity is important and relevant when you consider much of their subject matter. I try to remember this at times.

I see that you used to focus a lot more on documentary photography in the UK, but your work in the US tends to veer more towards street photography. Do you see a difference between the two? If so, is there a reason why your work in the US is mainly street? Are there any documentary photography projects in New York that you’d like to work on?

Really I’m pleased that you’ve picked up on this. Personally I think it’s just an indication of how we grow or sometimes just deviate as photographers. Whilst I appreciate that consistency can become expected it can also stifle. The last photographs of someone’s life are very rarely similar to their earlier exploits or even those mid-career. Getting back to your first question though; I still see much of my street work as documentary photography. In these street photography renaissance times the genre (or sub-genre as I think the case may be) there seems to be almost a struggle with its terminology. In 1972, the Life Library defined the term ‘documentary photography’ as ”a depiction of the real world by a photographer whose intent is to communicate something of importance – to make a comment that will be understood by the viewer”. Further to this three types of ‘reality’ were proposed by the same authors in conveyance of: visual reality, social reality, and psychological reality. There’s often a move towards the visual pun or reliance upon some arrangement of quirky elements in much of street photography. Nowadays it can appear very different from the more ‘concerned’ workings in documentary photography so it’s quite confusing at times.

My current work since I’ve been here in the United States is primarily street photography. I have spent much of my time photographing within the frenetic environ of Manhattan which has lent itself to photographing different types of behavior and people sometimes in unusual situations. There is also a different type of tolerance level found in the crowds in general, maybe even a desensitization to the probing camera lens which has permitted a different working for me. Technically a certain level of subterfuge exists with the wide angle lens as well. All of these factors have tempted me towards more street photography.

There are many documentary projects that I’d like to see get off the ground however – one of these is in upstate New York, an area that has certainly piqued my interest. Other projects within New York are still ongoing though including ‘Avenue Street’ my Manhattan based work. Inspiration levels are quite high when you’ve recently moved to a new country or culture so you could say that I’m just letting the ‘dust settle’ for now. Having said that I did start a project soon after moving here based upon Roosevelt Island which is just off the east side of Manhattan, this is likely to expand and encompass other islands of New York.

Are there any projects in general that you’re itching to work on in the future?

In the past I’ve enjoyed photographing at home and overseas so I often have thoughts on turning the camera back towards the UK. Probably after some time in my new home country these feelings will increase – it’s too early to tell. India is a country that I’ve visited before and got ideas for a project a couple of hours away from Delhi. Likewise with the Indonesian side of Borneo, again after visiting there the wheels started turning on possible projects but they seem out of reach right now. For now though the US holds so much interest I don’t necessarily need to look too far. In essence, I find that things can happen in front you just as easily as far away. Whether this constitutes a project or not I’m uncertain, but I have a backlog of negatives both in color and B + W that need printing. I would look forward to becoming a darkroom hermit for a number of months!

Your work, for me, encompasses everything that is great about street photography. It is well observed, balanced, captures a time and place, and is very funny at times. How do you see yourself growing as a photographer in the coming years?

Thank you very much for the compliments in your observation. Both portraiture and landscape are areas that interest me, though the former probably applies more so. This is how I would like to expand upon my repertoire and incorporate different ways of working, even within the same body of work I believe the observed moment and the more directed approach can sit beside one another. Growing for me really means incorporating more commercial acumen though I’ve been saddened to see some great photographers that I’ve personally known lose touch with their creative sides in place of strictly financial reward – it became just a job. This represents part of my quest to grow over the next couple of years and to maintain a balance. Photographic education currently interests me as does a community based photo project of some sorts.

Finally, if you were not a photographer, what would you be?

Again – a great question. This one is difficult for me, there have been so many persuasions, deviations and distractions in my working life that nothing else seems to fit now but photography. Everything that has gone before seems to have relevance though, it all goes through a form of filter which is photography. Dare I say a painter of some description – and not just for buildings or fences…

All photographs © Shane Gray
Interview by Jeanette O’Keefe

After years of following his work online, I finally got a chance to interview Matt and have a conversation about his photography. For some, this conversation might be on the long side, but it’s worth it to hear Matt talk about his work and experience photographing on the streets of New York.

You can view more of Matt’s work and buy his book ‘The Urban Prisoner’ on his website. He’s also very active on Google+.

Are you still driving a taxi? When I first read that (can’t remember where) I was instantly intrigued. I know it’s rather superficial, but I’ve always been interested in photographers who make their work on the job, or in between the job, or despite of the job. Maybe more specifically, how do you think your perspective as a cabbie (or blue collar guy) impacted the way you shoot?

I started driving a taxi when I was pretty young. I was twenty years old and had been a truck mechanic at a shop in Brooklyn. As a skinny kid, I could barely lift the truck’s tires off of their axles and I would come home exhausted with skinned knuckles. The minimum wage was $2.50 per hour and after taxes I was taking home $80 a week. Someone mentioned that I could make a better living driving a cab and I knew that being a mechanic wasn’t any fun, so I showed up at a taxi fleet in Long Island City.

The taxis were Dodge Aspens which were some of the worst taxis, let alone cars, America ever built. They were ugly underpowered vehicles but I was young and found cruising around NYC actually pretty cool. Even though I’d spent my entire life in New York, there were many neighborhoods which I had never been to and I felt like I was an explorer as well as a driver. I’m not sure if I’d ever been to the Bronx other than to see Yankee games. Maybe I had one trip as a kid to Staten Island.

Unlike most cabbies, I was thrilled to take people to the outer boroughs. I’d just blast some tunes and take my time whittling my way back to Manhattan. Working the night shift was preferable because I was full of energy back then and I had already spent a couple of years driving muscle cars at speeds which made me wonder if I shouldn’t consider racing school. I loved speed and as I said, the V6 Aspens were like molasses compared to the Pontiac’s I had driven.

It took almost three years before the job became boring and even then, I realized that not having a boss was precious. I bought a medallion in ’82 and installed a nice stereo into my brand new Crown Victoria, and decided to try and make a career out of the taxi business. Having been arrested many times as a minor, this phase of my life seemed like a good decision and part of me wishes that I had been able to stick with it over the long haul.

In 1984 I was robbed at double gunpoint by teenagers which was a ridiculous experience. I had been robbed at single gunpoint before, but to feel two barrels at my stomach and head simultaneously, wiggling nervously under a pair of trigger fingers, is something hard to imagine. I installed a bulletproof partition a few days later and shrugged it off. I never even contemplated giving up the taxi as a way to make a living. How else could a high school drop out make $100 a night? Besides, the “No Boss factor” was as I said, priceless.

I had seen so many things on the streets that I kept saying “If only I had a camera.” I had seen knife blades flickering under the street lights of Hell’s Kitchen and punk rockers having sex on the hood of a car at dawn on Houston Street. A camera seemed like the only way to capture the crazy stuff which was happening almost every night. I wish I’d kept up my shooting as a kid with my grandmother’s Kodak rangefinder. It was a lousy camera, but if I’d stuck with it, I’d have documented the ’70s which I think were more interesting than the 80′s. So one day in December 1984 I walked into Competitive Camera and bought an AE-1 and a 50mm lens.

At first I shot a lot of color film and then at one point in 1985 I decided that black & white was the best for me. I had built a darkroom and found that color was too tricky to develop. Also, most of the few photographers I had ever seen used B&W. I did make a point of shooting a few rolls of Kodachrome 64 each year because it did seem like a good thing to do. K-64 was like reality in a tiny canister. I wish I had shot more. Between 1984 and 1987 I did some decent work but I was still smoking a lot of weed. The amount of mistakes I would make started to bother me. I’d be shooting at F 16 late at night or F 1.4 in bright sunlight and in 1988 I stopped getting high and sure enough the mistakes became a thing of the past and my work started getting better.

Around that time I started to go to a few exhibits and also started to buy some monographs at a little bookstore in the village. Just as soon as I thought I was hot shit, I went to ICP and saw an exhibit by Marc Riboud, the French photojournalist and left the museum feeling two inches tall! It’s not good to live in a bubble because you need to occasionally gauge your work based on a truthful assessment of the work of others.

Fortunately despite feeling useless, I didn’t fold up my tent and quit. I think that failure is important. Failing over 99% of the time and not giving up is something to be proud of. I still take awful pictures on a daily basis and I always will. There aren’t too many other types of photography where that’s the expected result. If you can live with constant failure then you’ll also be rewarded with the occasional gem. I never tried to be frugal with my film. I never shot crazy amounts like Winogrand, but I also didn’t try and stretch out a roll. Any glimmer of hope is a fine reason to press the shutter. The shots that didn’t seem to matter when you took them do yield some great images, and the no-brainers often suck. No way to know as things unfold on the street, so hesitating would be a lousy strategy.

After almost six years of shooting pictures while driving a cab, I realized that I was driving around New York looking for pictures more than I was looking for my next fare! I didn’t care about money and was behind on my bank payments for the medallion. I made what was one of the worst decisions I ever made financially, and I sold the medallion in 1990. I wanted to be a photographer and had been driving a taxi for over twelve years. The problem was I didn’t know how to shoot now that I was on foot and I guess I didn’t know how to walk as well as I did drive, so my work started to suffer. I would suffer from the photographic equivalent of “Writer’s Block” for many years and it would be the crazy decision to spend most of my savings on a pair of M6′s and a few lenses, that would help me make a comeback.

The Leica’s were something which I knew I might never buy if I waited till I could afford them, so I took the plunge anyway. I’ve often compared the decision to buy my Leica’s to buying a new sports car. You’ll obviously want to drive the sports car all the time and you’ll drive it more often, with more precision. If you have a new lover, you’re very likely to make more love and probably with considerably more enthusiasm. I suddenly loved the feel of this new camera in my hands. I wanted to shoot more pictures. I loved the precise focus which yielded razor sharp results. The quiet shutter was great too.

Most people have some fear when out on the street and not having a loud clapping mirror helped deal with that issue. I would take a picture and not have heads spin instantly. I started to take pictures which previously had seemed off limits. Twenty years later, I still live month to month and know that a $600,000 medallion and a $1,800 a week job would be a nice thing. The pictures I have taken don’t put me on easy street and if I had still been taxi driver, I know that I might have been shot or gotten into a head on collision.

No turning back the clock. Having a kid to support and trying to make street photography pay off is an almost impossible task, but despite the struggles I’m glad that I am a photographer. The camera saved me from myself once and has helped me through some other rough times since then. I have more work than I will ever be able to complete and that’s a blessing! I’ll never be an old guy watching Seinfeld reruns and wishing I had done something else with my life.

Are you out photographing on the street every day? Where are some of your favorite spots in NYC to shoot?

I don’t have the energy or the money to really go out and shoot every day any more. My recent attempts at shooting color have been very rewarding because of all the challenges of adding an additional element to my thinking as I shoot. Now things that I may have passed on seem to hold promise, which is fun. The problem is that after experimenting with several different films, I have decided that Kodak’s Portra 800 is the way to go. At over $10 per roll and then another $5 for dip & dunk processing it is costing me around $16 a roll and as you know, there are rarely more than a couple of shots per roll worth even considering. If I really get into a groove I can shoot between five and ten rolls a day, and the cost is killing me!

The heat is also a factor for me. I sometimes find that running around the city when it’s 95-100º can leave me faint sometimes. I’m all of sudden a middle aged guy who may think like a teenager, but my body wants none of it. The last time I went to Coney Island it was one of those 102º days and I needed to sit down with a bottle of water and recover for almost an hour! I’m dedicated, but my daughter’s the most important thing and I gotta take care of myself better. As far as my favorite locations to shoot, I’ve always preferred areas which are not completely gentrified.

Even when I was young and driving a cab, all I wanted was the leftovers from Walker Evans’ days. The older bars with their neon signs and the crumbling buildings in Harlem were some of my favorite things to shoot. Old cars, and the non renovated parts of the subway system were also very important to me. Anything which I might have seen in a Berenice Abbott photo would make me happy. I’m not sure why I was, and am so drawn to the older artifacts but I am. That’s why I’ve spent a lot of time at Coney Island during the past 8 years. It was one of the few places which retained much of its atmosphere from the post war days when everything cost 5¢.

The garment center is also cool because you see all sorts of people pushing those carts around in any weather, and the neighborhood looks much like it did thirty years ago. Times Sq was a terribly dangerous place back then and luckily I took a few pictures, but as usual wish I had shot a lot more! Regrets of missed opportunities have plagued me, but also helped me greatly. I can lament a missed shot for a very long time, if I think it may have been epic. Those type of shots are far and few between.

In order to spare myself the self inflicted torture which follows missing a potentially great photograph, I’ve learned three things from my mistakes. Never leave home without your camera. Never do it! Always keep at least one extra roll of film, or these days an extra battery and CF card I suppose. Lastly, don’t hesitate when you see something fantastic. Fear and or embarrassment, has cost me a handful of images which I’m certain would have been very important to me. It’s hard to block out emotions sometimes, but if you want to be a “Nice Guy” and never upset a soul, you’ll be better off doing something else.

These days street shooting is more of a game to me. I look for interesting faces to pop up from the masses. If I’m lucky I might find threesomes which for some reason I’ve always enjoyed shooting. Three of a kind is always something I try to get. Four of a kind is much harder. The geometry of the street is also important when just wandering around without a subject in particular. If I see tall, short, tall, short or combinations which just look good because of their size and shape. sometimes that can be enough.

Of course an actual moment when something exciting is happening is much better, but there are times when you can’t buy one! A really funny moment sometimes seems cruel when photographed or not as funny when you look at it as a photograph. I think its important to shoot things which might not be easy to do and may often make people angry. If you only shoot safely, you’ll have much less worth editing. I don’t think you have to get super close like Gilden either. Some people think hipshooting with a 21mm lens is the way to go.

I have never liked ultra wide lenses because the resulting image is so obviously distorted. I only shoot from the hip when it seems like a good shot and my safety may be threatened. I hate finding that I didn’t frame an image well because of fear, so I try and take a quick peek through the viewfinder rather than just hope I nailed it. The 28mm & 35mm lenses are the perfect tools in my opinion, but everybody has their own comfort zone and will chose accordingly. It kinda annoys me when I see people with a 200mm lens shooting people from fifty feet away, but from what I’ve read on Flickr many people fall in love with bokeh which I always thought had something to do with flowers.

I can relate to fear and embarrassment causing one to miss shots. I’ve been shooting street off and on for five years and while I feel I’ve picked up some insights and have a better idea of what I’m doing these days, it’s still a struggle sometimes to really do what it takes to be fully immersed when you’re out there, especially when it comes staying alert at all times and taking risks to get the shot. You’ve been doing it much longer naturally. You’ve mentioned a few of the challenges you face these days, but how much has your approach evolved over the years?

I feel that after twenty seven years of photographing New york, I have some off days where I just don’t care or maybe I just don’t have the necessary focus to react and take each opportunity that comes along. I don’t want to compare SP to sports, but I think that some days you’re in a “Zone” where not only do you see better, but you also respond quicker and with more confidence. In that respect its exactly like sports. Sometimes when I’m not feeling it, I’ll find myself in a very awkward situation where I have to weasel out of a potentially bad confrontation. Other times, nobody has a problem and everything is wonderful.

Expecting people to want to be photographed is something which will rarely happen. I think women have a huge advantage in this area. They are much less likely to get into a physical confrontation with men, and will also be likely to get along better with other women. I have been threatened so many times that it is necessary for me to be immune to insults and just try and keep moving along. When I was starting out, I did a lot of landscapes and I’m glad that I did. The city has changed so much that the skyline of 25 years ago is no longer dominated by the Empire State Building and it’s prettier cousin the Chrysler building. The world trade center was so ugly that I never really cared to photograph it very much. I only took one picture of it that I really liked.

Of course there were a lot of crazy people in New York back then because you could rent an apartment in Manhattan for not much more than $100 per month. Groups of artists could share a railroad flat for $25 a month each, and almost anyone could scrounge up the rent one way or another. These days, most of the interesting people have been purged from their affordable apartments and the city is much more generic in its flavor. I think that all of these digital point and shoot cameras are making SP much more accessible to photographers because there’s very little overhead to jump in and build a body of work.

You don’t need to build a darkroom and spend a few months learning how to process film and make decent prints. The cost of being very prolific on the street was pretty high. I usually spent around $300 a month on film, paper and chemicals. Today you just shoot and then see what’s worth keeping when you get home. I still love the way film looks as I take my negatives and look at them through a loupe. Having never made contact sheets, I became pretty good at reading negatives, which is something I’ve been criticized for doing. I admit that I might give digital a try if someone gave me an M9, but that doesn’t seem likely, and a well exposed and developed TRI-X negative is still “state of the art” in my opinion.

I just have to keep looking at everyday as an opportunity even if other parts of my life are not going well. Having went through a brutal divorce over the past few years, I have plenty of days where I’m not feeling happy at all. To force myself onto the subway to shoot passengers who are usually not very friendly took some self motivation. It is important to keep going when things aren’t going well, because to sit around and pout is pathetic. Unless a true tragedy strikes, I think one must try and do something with each day. I’ve surprised myself with some of the work I’ve done during a period in my life that I never saw coming and wish I hadn’t had to endure. The good work has made me feel a lot better than if I had been stagnant.

When I walk around town, I know that most of the time there are going to be very few exciting moments to photograph. I have to have a very optimistic view of what I see on the street. Each time a traffic light turns green and I see a new group of people coming right at me, I see possibilities. Most of the time, what I thought I saw starts to diminish and falls apart, but every now and then the people fall into place perfectly and at least one of the people has something special about the way they look. Happy, sad. Pretty, ugly. Tall, short. Fat, thin. The simplest details when seen side by side or caught in a perfect stride can turn a very average picture into one which is worth taking.

Of course as I said, failing almost 99% of the time is life on the street. A great photographer, David Hurn once said that he had to expose 100,000 frames to get one image worth hanging in a museum. That is something to think about. Naturally as you get older and hopefully better, what once may have seemed acceptable is no longer enough to please you. That makes the game a lot harder to play. The simple “Poster with a person” type of juxtaposition is less likely to make me feel happy. I’ll still take some silly shots but I’m not looking to only make cute visual puns. The streets of New York have a lot of things to shoot which aren’t pretty. I want a little bit of everything.

What I like about my better pictures is that they are full of questions. Why are they laughing or fighting? What’s the old woman thinking about as she passes a couple of teens making out? Are they going to be married and live happily ever after? Was the homeless guy a veteran who spilled blood for us, or was he just spilling wine? I see lots of questions and that goes against an opinion that SP is boring because it gives you answers. I never understood that, but I don’t have a PHD.

In some of the discussions I’ve observed and contributed to in the last year, there’s been a sentiment that for many people street photography is just a phase for most people. They’d essentially use the street as a training ground, a place to exercise  the photographic muscles before moving onto more serious work. I think it’s very rare to find a photographer who sticks to street photography for the long haul. You certainly seem to be one of those guys, which is very admirable.

Looking over your body of work, are you perhaps taking a different perspective on it? Are you noticing themes and ideas now that you may have over looked in the past? I think the best ‘street photography’ often is about more than simply capturing the ‘flow of life on the street.’ I guess I’m wondering if you’ve started to look at your photography differently now that you’ve accumulated such a large body of work.  

I find myself at a very difficult time in my “Career.” I have done more much than I thought I would and at the same time less than I wish I had. Meaning, I never expected to have a decent body of work, but looking at it, I wish that I had become a “Concerned Photographer” like some photojournalists. It’s not that I don’t love street photography, but I think most of us would like to make a difference with our work, even though as a
street photographer, its almost impossible in the first place.

Photojournalists risk their lives and yet only a few have taken pictures which made a difference. Most people are totally saturated from being bombarded with images on their TVs, computers and magazines. It’s amazing how much bloodshed I’ve seen in my life going back to the age of seven when my grandmother took me to see “The Battle of the Bulge.” Growing up in the city during the 1970′s I saw quite a lot of real blood and I guess I’ve become uncomfortably numb to violence.

I once found myself watching a couple of teenagers shooting back and forth at each other in Washington Heights. All of a sudden it hit me that this wasn’t a fucking movie and that I should step on the gas and get the hell out of there. It seemed like a scene in a movie and I was watching it as such! That’s why it’s hard to take pictures that have a lot of punch to them. I still try, but its all soft compared the pictures coming back from the middle east. Those photographers have my total respect, because even though I’ve taken a few chances, I know that the guys and ladies over there are extremely brave.

This leaves a “Street photographer” who wants to do really good work, a real challenge. Funny pictures are very popular and I still find myself taking a few. Sad pictures are criticized by many keyboard warriors as being mean and heartless. I use the term keyboard warriors, because most of the criticism comes from anonymous writers who feel very brave.

To portray NYC in a funny or loving way is to be very selective and I’m trying to show a true view of the city. If my life’s work is basically a document of this great city, then I’d like it to be totally honest and as complete as possible. In a perfect world I would love to have each picture I take be a decent photograph one way or another. Since very few will be good, I’d like to have as many different subjects as possible.

Therefore, even though women are the most beautiful subjects, I force myself to photograph men and lots of old people as well. I’ll be old in a few years and I feel unsure as to how many years I have left as a photographer. If I don’t shoot a little bit of everything now, I may not have a chance later. I want to publish a few more books and the more strong images I have at my disposal, the better the books will be.

Anytime I leave the house, I might get very lucky and a great picture will always make me happy no matter what category it is, and why it happens to work. I want good pictures of everything, and I don’t care if it makes me sound greedy. I see some people working with almost mathematical precision, and at the same time almost no humanity. The pictures are very intelligent and take great foresight. I have a few which took some planning but mostly I love pouncing, when out of nowhere something just happens.

What seems like a potentially great shot can lift my mood for the rest of the day. I bet when a musician suddenly comes up with a good riff or a great line for a song, they suddenly feel much better. It’s so quick and in that split second, something special is created which is actually the result of many years work.

Once again, I don’t know what I want and I have to trust that my eyes will take in all that’s in front of me in a way that allows me to quickly process the possibility of a nice picture. Just like an athlete who is having a good game, sometimes everything is apparent and you just do everything right. Other times, like a guy who hasn’t had a hit in 40 at bats, one good scene after another finds you out of position or just too slow to react.

When I try too hard, I get nothing and when I just stop thinking about it, something good tends to happen. So maybe I am just capturing the flow of life on the streets, but I want all of it and not just the photogenic parts. A good friend once told me that I try too hard to capture exciting moments and that sometimes just a subtle expression on someone’s face is all that a picture needs. He’s right of course. I am looking to hit home runs, when some of the best pictures are very quiet ones.

The one type of photography which has bugged me lately, is when someone goes out and takes a lot of very simple and bland photographs, and then using the all too popular “Typology” bullshit, proves that people all over the world smoke cigarettes or wear striped tee shirts etc. I really find it hard to believe that such mediocre work can be celebrated just because someone accumulates a ton of similar subjects. Does that ever bother you when you see crap at a hallowed institution?

I don’t really get upset about what the galleries or ‘hallowed institutions’  are showing. It’s part of the machinery of the art world. One of the great things about the web is that alternative voices have been able to blossom and really thrive, to the point where the art world looks to some of these outlets as authorities. Sure, there’s certainly some silly and rather bland photography getting promoted but I think we’re also seeing some galleries take chances on work that’s surfaced from the web. I’m not sure how much it matters at the end of the day though because the fine art and documentary photography audience is very small relative to the larger art world.

Most of the people who appreciate photography tend to be other photographers I think. Street photography is having a moment right now because I think it’s easy to conceptualize – ‘street life, we’re all photographers capturing it!’ But I think that’ll fade eventually.

I think it’s interesting that you mentioned you wish you’d become a ‘concerned photographer.’ There’s no shortage of them either and I’m not really convinced that most of that work has much impact, or produces societal changes. So it makes me wonder what’s inside you that makes you feel that street photography is somehow inferior, or not as worthy.

I think one thing that’s important with street photography is that the photographer clearly communicate what compels them to go out and make these photographs. For me, the philosophical framework and biographical circumstances are important to understanding the work. I know that’s somewhat contentious because the photographs should stand out on their own but I’m not sure that’s enough any longer. I think we need more and I think adding more context only enhances our understanding of the work.

Just by learning a bit more about your background, your photographs have taken on a new life for me, and I think that’s pretty damn cool.

I use to think of SP as photojournalism’s little brother. I guess traveling half away around the world and risking one’s life in many various ways contributed to my feeling that way. I have gotten over it though. I was writing in the past tense. The same insecure guy who crawled out of ICP after seeing the Marc Riboud exhibit.

I’m totally comfortable with my place in the medium now. I’ve been threatened and attacked so many times that I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ve paid my dues at this point. Trying to make ends meet in 21st century NYC as a high school dropout has had its ups & downs. I’ve spent almost all of my available time and money trying to document New York for a long time and I would like to make a few pictures which have enduring qualities. As I mentioned, only a select few will get a chance to take pictures which can actually change history. The rest of us should be very grateful for the opportunity to make some pictures which are worth looking at for more than a split second!

If I were trying to take autobiographical pictures, I would have tried, and probably failed at something more along the lines of Larry Clark. All the stuff I did as a teen in the 1970s was rarely documented. Cameras were definitely not allowed, and to try and photograph the stuff we did, would have been a reason to be hurt very badly by the people I would have been taking pictures of. I had a good friend who was a talented boxer and he’d constantly slap me upside my head, in order to make me fight him.

There was quite a bit of fighting on the streets back in the old days. Whenever I see people fighting, I sort of feel like a sports photographer. After all the decisive moment is something which sport photography have always been about. I often say Motion & Emotion are my two favorite things when I’m wandering around town looking for things to shoot. Kissing is nice because love is certainly the best emotion, but a good fist fight is motion and very strong emotions in one picture. How can a street photographer want to photograph only interesting juxtapositions when life is spinning out of control in from of them?

I say that and a few very talented photographers feel exactly the opposite way. They’d never bother with something as obvious as a fight. They are better at finding wonderful abstractions and often humorous duplications on the street. I take whatever comes my way but I need to have a faint hope of promise. I can’t just shoot a roll every two blocks like the famous guy from the Bronx did. At ten bucks a roll, I’d need a Guggenheim to be half as prolific, and without a very good ghost writer, I doubt my application would get me lunch money.

I think it’s interesting that you mention fighting. On the web you frequently find this attitude that people need to prove how tough or aggressive they are in order to validate their photography. What is it about street photography that so many people equate it with aggression and danger?

Even the term ‘street’ often invokes the gritty, dirty, rough and tough. Listening to you, I get a sense that you’ve actually lived that life, so you can speak to it honestly. But for many people, it seems street photography becomes a way to assert themselves. A good example are a few videos that are floating around of young dudes going out on the street and aggressively photographing strangers.

Well, you know more than I do about what’s happening these days. You curate a group of 40,000 photographers, so if anyone has the pulse of street photography, it’s you! I just hate being sneaky, and I don’t want a fight at this point under any circumstances. After all these years, and many tense encounters, I’ve only been injured once. A very nerve wracking situation happened on the Broadway local a few years ago, and left me wondering why  I keep doing what I do. I hate to be scared. The TV networks have half this country cowering because of Al Qaeda.

I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. I may have already said this. I almost never take pictures of extremely fat people or midgets. The same policy extends to people with terrible birth defects and burn victims. I reserve the right to take pictures of anyone if the picture is more than just a document of their own misfortune. Anything is possible and I suppose in the right context, I could shoot a picture of almost anybody.

As I always say, it’s still possible to edit what you show people after taking the pictures. A picture where I may have crossed the line of decency, can never be seen again. If I don’t see any redeeming value in a picture, I wouldn’t want it to be seen. Once again, I don’t want to photograph only women because they are beautiful, or older people because I have issues with getting old (like most people my age). I want everyone, and that includes men.

There have been famous street photographers who barely photograph any men and it’s possible that their selection was partially based on self preservation. I mean if 85% of their subjects are senior citizens, then they have been very careful to avoid people who could do them any harm. That’s wise, but leaves an incomplete view of which ever city they may be shooting in.

You’ve been around for awhile, but you’ve got plenty of time left. How do you see your work progressing in the future? What’s next?

So what am I gonna do next? Sounds like a simple question but it’s not! I never knew what I was doing in the first place. I never had a project until I realized that I had already been photographing something for quite awhile. Once I realize that I have a substantial amount of images in a particular subject, then I figure there’s a lot to be gained in pursuing it further. So there is a chance that I will just fall into something
else down the road, even though it would be simpler to just figure out what I want to do.

Assuming that I don’t have an epiphany and realize what I must shoot, I can continue wandering around, just snapping whatever I come across that intrigues me. This may sound weak, but its worked for over twenty five years. If I had money I could buy a Widelux and start doing panoramas like many other great photographers have done.

A new camera with a different format would certainly give me a kick in the butt. Since money is not usually a trait of street photographers, I don’t think a new camera is happening anytime soon. What about this? “A Kickstarter campaign, “Bored Street Photographer needs $10,000 to buy a new camera and a ton of film, to inspire him to keep shooting” Think that might work?

I was lucky enough to have a chance to work with Todd Oldham on my subway book. He has the “Midas Touch” and did a wonderful job designing the book. Finding a publisher these days isn’t easy and even though Blurb has improved, I think most would prefer having a real publisher take a chance on one’s work. I will also try and design another Coney Island book down the road. The one I did last year with Mike Peters was very satisfying. Most photographers want to do only books of their work, and I think that from a reader’s point of view, a collaboration can sometimes be more interesting. So publishing a few books that are worth reading is something I hope to achieve.

I always say “I’m just shooting my way through life” and since its been a great ride so far, why stop?

Mike will be showing images from September 11, 2010 at Lunasa in NYC. The opening will be on Tuesday evening, September 6th at 6 pm, until 9, or later.

mikepeters.com

Your work inhabits a unique zone in street photography. It’s candid, but still very much portraiture. From our brief discussions I understand that for the most part you aren’t explicitly asking permission from your subjects to make the photographs, but more often than not, there’s subconscious agreement. Maybe this is a tough question to start, but how exactly do you approach and photograph people you find interesting in public spaces?

This may sound pretty simplistic, but basically I just stand in front of the person, frame, focus and wait for them to notice me. Sometimes they’re so wrapped up that they never notice me and the shot is lost. But when they do, it’s usually in that fleeting instant as they’re looking up and at me that I will make the photo. I believe that there is an instant, before they can decide to register on their face whatever reaction they may deem appropriate, or turn away, where the subject has surrendered to the inevitable opening of the shutter. I do my best to steer their ultimate reaction in a positive, or at least non-confrontational direction, by what I do after I’ve made the photograph. While the person is usually still looking, as I lower the camera, I make sure there is a friendly smile on my face, and I may nod an acknowledgement, say thanks, or all of the above.

Sometimes there is enough in their expression or body language to convey whatever it is I’m feeling about their presentation, and eye contact is not necessary to carry the image. It really just depends on the person. However, the concussive nature of the shutter and mirror assembly in my camera usually gives me away, so my post exposure action is the same as above. Matt Weber always calls my Hasselblad the Scandinavian Howtizer, and he claims that people usually recoil in fear or run for cover when they feel and hear the impact of the shutter. I think perhaps he exaggerates, but then he is used to the gentle whisper of his Leica.

I shoot with a lens that is either slightly longer than normal, normal, or much wider (110, 80 & 50 on 6×6) I’m almost always pretty close, anywhere from 3 to 15 feet away. It seems to me that being fairly open about my intentions, holding a big camera and looking through it frequently, and shooting very openly right in people’s faces at a conversational distance, and not running away afterwards, tends to put people more at ease than if I were to attempt some form of subterfuge. If you act as if you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, then people seem to get that you’re doing something respectable. Bottom line is, most people like to be noticed one way or another, but more so if you come across as non-threatening. However, there are always those who take offense at everything, so it’s good to just be able to smile and walk away, and try not to let the exchange intrude on the rest of your day.

There was an interview I read awhile back with Alec Soth where he talked about choosing subjects and how after awhile he learned to follow his intuition. Are you looking for certain types of subjects (or characters)? And how has this changed over the years, especially as your projects have evolved.

In the beginning I just photographed anyone who didn’t seem too scary, I was pretty indiscriminate. In time though, I began to wonder, why do I choose the people to photograph that I do? I may walk down the street and pass hundreds along the way, but there is one that catches my eye, and I just have to make a photograph. Usually it’s someone who seems to be in a private moment, fully engaged in their mind, their bodies and faces expressing something that I feel a certain familiarity with or connection to. And that is the key, that sense of looking into a mirror and seeing a bit of myself reflected back. I feel most strongly about images where the person appears to be expressing something that I can know and understand, because I’ve been there myself. Or so I think, I could be completely wrong about what is going on, but the visual clues strike a chord within me that I cannot ignore. I also tend to be drawn to people on the fringes of things, not so much the action itself of whatever is going on, which is pretty much exactly where I am most of the time, on the outside looking in.

I’ve learned more about myself through photography over the years. When I was younger, I was very unsure of myself and how to reconcile where I came from and where I wanted to go in life. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I really became comfortable in my own skin and could accept more fully who I was. At that point, my personal photography really began to get much better. Like my sense of myself, my photography was all over the place when I was younger, but the bones of what I’m doing now are there to see as I look through old film. I can trace right back to the beginning that I could do the work I am doing now, but I was unable to tap into it on a regular basis back in the days of yore. Some people are lucky and have a strong sense of themselves at an early age and are able to do great work right from the get go, but not me.

I grew up in a blue collar town in NJ, surrounded by hard working people who lived pretty simple lives. I really like those kinds of people, I come from there, so I feel that I can make authentic photographs of people like that. And that is essentially who I prefer to photograph when I’m out and about. I don’t really relate to guys in suits or the country club set, so I almost never make a photograph depicting someone like that. Not that I couldn’t make a photograph that was authentic of someone from a different sphere of society, but in my personal work I like the idea of photographing people that usually go unnoticed. To photograph someone is my way of acknowledging their existence, beyond their family album.

Many of my photographic influences did just that. LIFE magazine elevated the ordinary person to the entire world when they sent W. Eugene Smith out to do a photo essay a nurse midwife, or Leonard McCombe to photograph a working girl in NYC, or Grey Villet to photograph a furniture salesman, and countless others. Those were the images that made me sit up and take notice. I work a little differently then they did, but my interests are the same. I notice ordinary people, doing nothing in particular, living regular lives. Just like me. So that’s what I photograph.

You mentioned W. Eugene Smith and Leonard McCombe which makes me curious about other influences. Do you feel that you’re working in a certain documentary tradition? I most curious about the dynamic between the documentary tradition that focusses on a specific subject, be it a group of people, location or what have you, and the tradition of street photography, which from some perspectives abides by a notion of having no agenda. It seems that you’ve developed a hybrid approach. Is this something you’ve thought about over the years?

When I began photographing, it was not so easy to find books on photography, beyond technical volumes and pretty pictures, in the local library, which was my only real resource along with photo magazines. Early on, and because I subscribed to the LIFE Library of Photography while in high school, photographers like Smith, McCombe, Villet, Cartier-Bresson, Capa, and others, were really the photographers who’s work made my heart sing. Especially Smith, who seemed to dip every image into a deep vat of meaning. On the other hand, I was also quite fascinated by the portraits of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Arnold Newman. They seemed to bring out something deeper in their subjects.

However, as a counterpoint to LIFE’s earnestness, Robert Frank offered his particularly raw commentary in The Americans. And of course there was Diane Arbus, who seemed to live under the skin of her subjects. Both of their images were disturbing yet endlessly fascinating and yet seemed to be very sadly compassionate. Being very young and naive, I wasn’t sure what to make of either of them, but I could not look away.

I was also exposed to the work of Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Davidson, Andre Kertesz, Brassai, August Sander, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Eggleston, Winogrand (who was Winograd at the time), Ernst Haas, Pete Turner and Jay Maisel. All of this went into the early mix of who I admired as a young photographer, which led to my being all over the place. I couldn’t decide which I liked more, or even who I was or what I was all about, but that had nothing to do with photography. I was as undefined as one can get and yet still function on some low level of cognition. I was a mess, as was my work.

From all of my myriad influences, street, photojournalism, documentary, portraiture, commercial and fine art, it’s no wonder my work doesn’t really fit into any defined genre of photography. I feel like my work picks and chooses from each part of the spectrum, finding a place thats really none of the above. I shoot on the street because it’s easily accessible and I don’t have to make an appointment to go there. But, I really don’t consider myself as a street photographer in the classical sense as my interests are more about the specific people I’m photographing and less about the situation unfolding in front of me.

I photograph people simply because I find my fellow humans to be far more relate-able and fascinating than any other species. I grew up in the city, so I feel no real connection to landscape. And 95% of the time, I make what many people consider to be portraits, yet I exert no control over my subjects beyond where I stand and when I push the shutter release, as I prefer that they be spontaneous rather than calculated. The other 5% of the time, I may be engaged in a conversation with my subject and will make an image at some point, and rarely I will ask permission. However, asking is becoming something I am doing more of as I experiment with shooting at night with either a tripod, or a flash.

I tend to concentrate on places that offer a variety of people for me to photograph, rather than on specific groups of people or subject matter. The places I gravitate towards though do tend to have the types of people that I am interested in photographing, regular types going about their daily lives. So I’m not really a documentarian either, as what I do happens far too haphazardly to be useful in any way.

My approach came about by eliminating what didn’t work for me. As a commercial photographer, I have to deal with logistics all the time, making appointments and having the images work for a specific purpose, or a whole bunch of purposes, and keeping that in mind. All of my paid work is done digitally using a 35mm camera, and it seemed to me that every time I viewed the world through a rectangular frame, I see it as a job. So, for my personal work; no agenda, no logistics, square format and film.

I had been shooting most of my personal work since the late 70′s up until 2000 with a 4×5 camera, which I still love but find the scarcity of emulsions and the disappearance of ready-loads to be the death knell for me. Plus, I did want my work to become more spontaneous. When I look through a square finder, the world is sufficiently different enough so I’m not at all confused about this being a job. And film, for all it’s limitations, imperfections and tediousness is a way of staying connected with the fundamental process of photography, which I love.

I see documentary photos as telling a true non-fiction account of specific subject matter. Unlike a documentarian, I don’t try to tell any stories with groups of images. Each image is made to stand on it’s own and is made without regard to any previous image or to serve any part of a story telling process. But like a documentarian, I see my photographs as true and non-fictional impressions of what I see, and how I feel about what I see. I’m not trying to be impartial, I want my images to be evocative, to strike a chord of emotion and a sense of connection to the subject within the heart and mind of the viewer.

When I group images together, they tend to be more about where I was shooting. My current project, The Dream, which I’m wrapping up, was shot in a variety of places close to where I live over 9 years. Initially, I thought I was working on a few projects, but at one point it became apparent that what I had was really one big project, which is my impression of the lives of ordinary Americans in the years since 9/11. I did not set out with that in mind. The images, as I made them lead me along. For me, photography is a path of discovery that reveals itself as I move along, one foot in front of the other, one image at a time. Along the way, as I have found images to make, I’ve also found a greater sense of myself and what is important to me. So, my work is not as all over the place as it used to be, and neither am I, so that’s a good thing.

We’re coming up on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, what type of changes have you noticed in people over the years? Have you seen it in your photography? Do you think the 10th Anniversary will be a significant turning point for people?

I tend to notice that people are more distracted with their gadgets, or simply by the stream of thoughts in their heads. The effect is the same though, people are not where they are at any given moment. And to me, people seem more weary, but then I do tend to see through a my own situation and how I feel about my life.

In my photography I’ve see a big change. When I started shooting on the street, I was more in search of what could be described as the classic street photograph, interesting things happening, odd arrangements, bigger and broader frames. But as I grow older, I notice that I want to get as close as possible to my subject and to really make my photographs very specific about the faces and body language that I see, and how it relates to the surroundings in which they are. I feel the need to get personal, to draw the subject into the process of making the photograph by waiting for them to look at me, or to simply willfully ignore my presence. I feel that by getting closer I can maybe foster a relationship between my subject and the viewer.

So, I see disconnectedness on the street, people lost in their own little worlds, and I try to pierce that moment and forge a connection, if only for a 500th of a second, so that others can see the people I photograph, not so much as actors on a stage, but as fellow human beings. My hope is that people who look at my photos will see a bit of themselves in the faces of the people I photograph, as I do, that’s the best I can hope for.

I really don’t think the 10th anniversary will be a turning point for anyone, not for the families of those who were lost that day, or for any who have been damaged or left behind in the struggle since then. The media will make a big deal of it, but I don’t think anything changes simply by the turning of the calendar. I do believe that the way the aftermath of 9/11 was handled politically has done more to tear the fabric of our society than the perpetrators of destruction on that fateful day could have ever hoped for. We had an opportunity to come together, but instead we have been ripped apart by extremists from within. I think it will take a generation or two before we can say that we’ve turned a corner. I’m not sure I’ll be around to see it, but hopefully my photographs will survive so that others can see what I saw, and get a sense of how it felt to be here and now.

I think it’s interesting that 9/11 was the biggest media story perhaps in the last 100 years. It was broadcast live on TV and there were probably more photographs captured of it than any other big event in history. Then in the 10 years that have followed we’ve had this explosion in imagery because of digital cameras and the internet. It’s sort of a strange demarcation line but I think it’s real.

I’ve always enjoyed the opinions you’ve shared about photography on various platforms. Has the internet impacted the way you work? I mean, we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation if it weren’t for the social nature of photography on the web. I’m curious what you think about it all.

I agree that there has been a deluge of images everywhere since 9/11, but that would have happened even if that day was ordinary. The process was very well along, and the outcome of the digital revolution in photography was already a foregone conclusion by 2001, if not a year or so before. The general acceptance of digital cameras, even now of very high quality in phones, and the ease with which they can be put up on the web has certainly democratized the medium. The technology truly enables almost anyone to make a photograph that is in focus and well exposed. Everyone with a DSLR thinks they are a photographer now, but really, making a compelling image, and especially a series of them over a long period of time is still pretty hard, and it takes boat loads of patience and dedication. The problem is, fewer people have any clue as to what a great photo is, even some professionals in the industry. So now, everything is great and everyone’s amazing! Just like when they were kids. I didn’t get that when I was a kid, so I still struggle with wondering if my work is any good.

The internet, what a miracle, thanks Al Gore! Ok, really, it is pretty astonishing that it even works, never mind wirelessly. Everything is at our fingertips, so much is wonderful, and yet so much crap to wade through to find it. In the olden days, we had to rely on books and magazines to periodically feed us our small dose of good images. That made big publishers the gate keepers and taste makers for great photography, doling out what they wanted, and everyone else just kept their photos in shoeboxes under their bed or in a storage unit until they died, when all their life’s work would be tossed into a trash container and put in a landfill. Unless you were famous or lucky, then someone would take the time to preserve your work for generations to come. Now, the gatekeepers and arbiters of what’s hot have been spread far and wide. And some of them are good with a well defined point of view and a decent grounding in the history of photography.

I’ve been shooting personal work since the late 70′s. Until about the mid ninety’s when I set up my first web site, I’d make a few prints, show a few friends, watch them yawn, put them back in the box and forget all about them. Now, I post on my web site and on Flickr. More than half the fun of making photographs is to be able to show them to people. Flickr has opened up a whole new world of people to me. People from across the globe who all make interesting and beautiful work. And people who now can look at my work and leave comments. In essence, I get to share with the world now. That’s pretty darn amazing as far as I’m concerned. Not that Flickr is perfect, but for what it does, I’m happy to use it.

If not for the web, I would never have run across you, or many others out there who have become friends. The web has been an education for me, about the world of art, galleries, and the work of so many other talented photographers and insightful bloggers who explain it all for me and sometimes confuse the hell out of me. I don’t always agree with what people say, but it’s good to hear many different voices along the way to making up my own mind about what’s going on. In a sense, you have to become your own editor with the web, otherwise the noise will overwhelm you.

The important thing, for me anyway, is to be able to, at times, withdraw from looking at the work of others and reading too much criticism. It’s too easy to look at someone else’s work and immediately begin to feel like my own work suffers in comparison, or we’re so similar, or I was thinking of that and now he/she has done it, whatever. I can quickly get burned out and demoralized by the avalanche of images every day. There are times when I just have to stop looking and reading, shut the hell up and go out and make images in a way that is totally single minded and free of the noise of all the images and words that have tumbled into my head from the web. For me, it’s real important to not be constantly conjuring up images as I walk along the street, it gets in my way. I need my head to be as empty and quiet as possible when I’m out and about, trying to stay out of my own way so when the pictures find me, I’ll be able to let them into the camera. It’s a challenge, and sometimes I do ok, and other times not so well. That being said, I spend far too much time lurking about the virtual world. Eventually I hope to find a balance. But, probably not. I’m sure I’ll just keep lurching about, making it up as I go along.

One of the topics that comes up often when I talk to photographers about projects is about endings. It seems many of them have a hard time ending projects or knowing when they should end. What are you thoughts about this as it applies to your current project? How do you know when it’l be done? And what are your plans for it? A book?

With some projects, ending is something that happens when you decide you’re ready to move on. Or with others, there is a more definite end, a time frame or a place or person is not longer in existence, or accessible, so you’re done. The Dream has been a bit harder to pin down as to when it ends. It’s really my response to our post 9/11 world, so there is no end to that as it’s ongoing, until I end. So for me, everything I do until the end of my life will be about that. My photography is about what it is to be in this place and at this time, so any ending on this part of the story is completely arbitrary.

Last fall, I was thinking that I was done and ready to pack it up and make a book. Then, along came a publisher, a very fine small press that specializes in photo books who has done some wonderful work, and they expressed interest in what I was doing. So, I thought, wow, it’s really time. But, it wasn’t. Our view of my work was really quite different, six months had passed since they first made contact, and new work had been done that would fit in nicely. Also, my original production schedule to have a book out by September had passed, and I decided to let it go until the end of this year before I would call it done. I figured I’d let the tenth anniversary come and go, see what other images I could make, and then, call it a decade. The Dream will be done at that point. I’ve already moved on to other projects which I am slowly working on which have no deadlines. But they are smaller in scope and judging by past history, I will someday find other interests that will peak my curiosity and lead me in other directions. And then, they will be done.

My process is very organic. I don’t do big ideas or try to prove a point or examine a concept. I go where my heart and mind wanders, and see what’s there. And each time I go I find things out, about where I am and who I am in relation to what I see. Each photograph informs the next and leads down the path to more. It’s just how I am, and how I work.

And sometimes, I’ll tire of one thing and decide to do something else, just to see if I can. Until this year, all of my images were made candidly in daylight, or at least in light sufficient enough to make photographs without additional lighting. Now, I’m going out at night every so often, slowly starting to find my way using a flash and asking everyone if I can photograph them. It’s a new challenge, both on a technical level, and more importantly on a level that challenges my entire approach to the way I’ve been working over the past decade. Slowly I will come to grips with what this has to offer, and hopefully be able to come up with a body of work that is worth the time for people to look at. It may take years, or not. But I’ll know when I’m done when other projects hold greater interest for me.

Ultimately, I do like the process of collecting the work into a book format. Within the covers of a book is truly the best way to define and complete a body of work. I feel the work I do is best suited for the book format. Although I do very much like the idea of seeing my work on a wall, printed large and giving each image the space it needs to breathe and have a presence on it’s own is very special. But, an exhibit is more like a musical performance, impermanent, and soon gone. But a book lives on for a good long time, the pure physicality of it gives it a feeling of permanence and purpose.

I feel as if I’ll always have to do my own publishing though, so my output will be limited. I’m not a name that will sell books, and my work will never appeal to the masses, so publishers will probably never pick me up. Plus, I work full time, far too many hours, and my time and energy for getting out there and competing for the attention of publishers is limited, and far beyond the scope of my meager capacity for marketing and self-promotion. I just don’t have the emotional fortitude for it, plain and simple. So I’ll just stick to doing what I do best, making photographs until I can’t. And then, all of my projects will be finished.

Richard Bram, long-time member of iN-PUBLiC, is renowned for his black and white street work, but has recently seriously begun making color street photographs. The premiere exhibition of this new direction will open Thursday at Lunasa in NYC and run through the end of August.

Lunasa
126 First Avenue (between 7th and 8th Streets)
New York, NY

In anticipation of this show, Richard and I discussed his career, the new work and the recent popularity of street photography.

It seems like its been nothing but change the last few years. How has coming to NYC impacted your work on the street? I moved from LA to NYC where there’s a noticeable difference in activity on the sidewalk and in public. I imagine London and NYC are a bit more similar, yet likely entirely different in their own ways too.

The way I work and what I choose to shoot hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve always worked in New York and was usually here once or twice a year while I was London-based. In some ways, it is easier to work on the streets here. It is so crowded that no one notices another guy with a camera in a city swarming with tourists. It is more relaxed in terms of walking around with a small camera and making photographs than it seems to have become in London. I have recently spent quite a few sunny afternoons working on a couple of corners in SoHo, making photos very close-up of shoppers and tourists. No one takes any notice other to occasionally grumble about my standing in the way.

However, the mood is more suspicious than it used to be in both cities. There are a lot more ‘No Photography’ signs everywhere. After years of the government telling them to always be afraid, that the Terrorists are everywhere, the general background level of paranoia is higher. The police generally have better things to do than bother with someone suspiciously taking pictures of the Empire State Building or a Papaya Dog storefront, but the ever-increasing private security guards are more hostile and full of themselves than they used to be. They seem to feel, as they do in London, that they own not only the territory of the building that hired them but the public sidewalks around as well.

New York and London are very similar in the most important way in terms of Street Photography: they are dense. The sidewalks are filled with people on foot at all hours. The physical structures of the two cities create entirely different moods, though. London is a low city, rarely more than five or six stories anywhere. The streets are generally narrower and more irregular. This gives it a calmer, quieter atmosphere then the tall, vertical grid of New York. The streets themselves are often wider here but feel smaller and tighter. Manhattan can be almost overwhelming: There are more neuroses on view per square yard than any place I’ve ever been.

“There are more neuroses on view per square yard than any place I’ve ever been.” Is that something you’re looking for when you’re shooting? I know generally street photographers don’t have an agenda when they shoot, however, I know that often you’ll notice patterns in your work that might hint at something your unconscious might be interested in pursuing.

Consciously, I don’t think so. But as I said last year in the interview portion of Nick Turpin’s “in-public in-sight” film, New York City may be the most extroverted place on earth: Everything is just out there for everyone to see and hear. Walk a little bit in any direction on a busy avenue and you’ll see every sort of person imaginable from all walks of life. It’s certainly what makes life here interesting and often exhausting. I’m not sure it is something that I seek directly in my photos, but it is something I notice when I’m out in the city. People are wound up, maybe it’s job pressure, the crush, the lack of private space, the dirt, the unrelenting noise, lack of sleep, social pressure.

I do think that my state of mind at any one moment shows in the photos, as they do in the photos of anyone who shoots regularly or expresses themselves via the visual arts. Looking through contact sheets, what is on view is the psyche of the photographer as much as the subjects of the images. One particular example springs to mind: In September 1997 I had living been in Britain for three months, adjusting to being married, in a new life in a new country. My friend Susan Lipper was in town and I asked her to take a glance through my contacts from those first weeks. She quietly looked them over and said that while she saw some very good images, mostly what she saw in them was distance, anger and alienation, which pretty well summed it up.

This relates to a couple of inter-related themes that I do see crop up in my work: couples and the ‘odd person out,’ often both (or should I say all three) in one photo. Often in my life, I’ve felt as if I were that third person, the one who doesn’t fit, so I tend to notice it in others when I’m watching people.

The anecdote about Susan looking at your photographs is interesting because I’ve run into that as well, where people will tell me that my photographs evoke emotions or ideas that I never thought of. I kind of shrug it off, and say, “I suppose” but I also see what they’re saying. It’s interesting. Clearly feedback is extremely important, and you’ve had the benefit of being surrounded (virtually!) by some of the most interesting street photographers working today. How has being involved with iN-PUBLIC impacted your work?

The impact has been both virtual and literal. Living in both London and New York, I’ve met nearly all my iN-PUBLiC colleagues in person, and in London we’d get together regularly at a Clerkenwell pub for drinks, a meal, and lots of conversation. Here in New York, our interactions are different. We do contact each other and get together individually to see an exhibition or for dinner or a drink, but rarely as a group.

Being involved from the very early days with the photographers of iN-PUBLiC has had a tremendous impact on my work. First of all, having a community of like-minded shooters, all dedicated to keeping the standards of our genre high sharpens one’s critical faculties. This is the hardest and perhaps the most important part of being a serious street shooter – learning to edit, to know a great shot from a good one, and an ordinary one at a glance. All of those ‘if only,’ ‘almost,’ and ‘except for’ shots go right into the bin.

One thing that has certainly happened because of my involvement with iN-PUBLiC is a shift in my style, away from the ‘visual one-liner,’ to more complex images with greater emotional ambiguity. While I think my sense of humor still comes through in a lot of my more recent photos, both content and compositional style have shifted a bit, less formal and balanced, dealing more with chaotic situations, but not losing control. It’s a very fine line between just random pictures of people on the street, no matter how close one may be, and something with real content. This is the mistake most would-be street shooters make: A photograph taken on the street is not necessarily a Street Photograph. Just faces along the sidewalk, no matter how sharp and pretty the light, is not enough: The best photographs work on more than one level. My fellow iN-PUBLiC members have helped me see that.

They have been and continue to be a source of blunt, sharp critique that keeps me on my visual toes, as I hope I am to them.

It’s been just over 10 years since in-public arrived on the scene, and in that time we’ve sort of witnessed an explosion in the popularity of street photography, which has been partly fueled by the internet, and places like Flickr. As with anything, it’s brought about some great things, and some not so great things. What are your thoughts on the current popularity of street photography? Do you look at more street photography now because of the web? Has that influenced your work? Added new sources of inspiration?

The resurgence of Street Photography is gratifying. I think iN-PUBLiC has had a major influence on this resurgence by early on taking a stand to define what we think good Street Photography is. Since then people have certainly disagreed with us and will continue to do so, but by creating the debate it has helped raise the bar. More and more people are beginning to get it. The Museum of London’s “London Street Photography 1860-2010” exhibition is the single most successful exhibition in the history of the Museum. Over 50,000 people have come to see it since it opened in mid-February, 10,000 in the first week. This alone testifies to the popularity of the genre. I think people can connect with photographs made directly from reality.

The flip side of this is that a lot more people say to themselves “I can do that.” Everyone has a camera, not least on their phone, and these are often better than the expensive digital cameras of ten years ago. But the truth is that very few people can “do that.” To make a great photograph is terribly difficult. Even the greatest photographers made very few in relation to the numbers of frames they shot. Street Photography is a heartbreak: so many frames, so few photographs.

The ability to coldly and harshly edit one’s own work is the most important skill. Sad to say, but most of what I see on Flickr lacks this ability; the critical faculty is missing. Good images posted are almost buried beneath scads of ordinary ones. Clichés are endlessly repeated: long shadows, old market people looking glumly at the camera, couples sitting in cafés, homeless people looking wretched, lots and lots of people’s backs, telephoto close-ups of no one in particular, and people against advertising signage, all accompanied by “Great shot, man!” in the comments section. I’ve done them myself so it is easy to recognize, but I have learned not to show most of them to anyone.

One can make these images and have them be original and clever, but it is desperately difficult to do. If this has influenced me in any way it is to avoid these things completely, to make fewer images that do not rely on the visual gag, the one-liner. Are there good new photos being made? Of course there are, all the time.

Interestingly enough I discovered the work of three current iN-PUBLiC members through Flickr, David Solomons, Paul Russell and the newest member Mark Powell. And it was really by following their streams that I learned about their work, rather than say looking at a nicely edited selection on their website. Naturally, they’re pretty good editors so the quality was generally higher than the norm, but they’re still pretty open with sharing their work. It is true that making a great photograph is terribly difficult but I also think there’s incredible value in looking at the near misses, especially from skilled photographers.

In terms of editing your work, what’s your process? Do you look at the photographs right away after you’ve been shooting? What makes you decide to go through the work of processing a photograph? Do you categorize the work by type (I’ve always liked Michael David Murphy’s ’The Phyla of Street Photography’) When do you start to solicit outside opinions?

I understand what you mean about looking at the B images vs. the A images. It gives an insight into a photographer’s way of thinking and editing, and can give one ideas about looking at one’s own work. I just don’t have the patience to wander through Flickr, or maybe I’m just too lazy. I do look at photographers who I see recommended by other, but don’t just go trolling through very often.

When I look at a contact sheet or the latest download from the card, I go through them pretty quickly, tossing the obvious dogs and mistakes, and putting at least one star (or a red outline) on anything of possible interest. Anything that has potential will get a basic processing to see what may be there, adjusting exposure and contrast as I would in the darkroom. The best images usually stand out pretty quickly. But then I might sit on them for a while, weeks, even months, while the immediate memories and emotions around the picture fade so that I’m left with just what’s in the rectangle, the image itself. After a bit of time, I’ve often found that images I liked right away become less interesting, and occasionally go “Wow! How did I not see THAT one before?”

I hadn’t seen Murphy’s “Phyla” article before – thanks for that. It is a very good analysis of what makes the best just so. I don’t directly categorize by type but more by subject – couples, crowds, dogs, kinds, signs, public transport and so on, that helps me find them later. (I think of Erwitt’s comment, something like “Contact sheets are like toothbrushes: one doesn’t normally show them to other people.”) After I’ve pondered them myself for a while, I ask a very few people for opinions, usually when I’m beginning to edit for a show or a presentation. By then, I have a good idea of what’s there but may not be sure about a few. Weighing these opinions will usually help with a final decision. But there is always a caveat when asking other photographers: They will prefer photos that are closest to the sorts of things they shoot themselves.

How do you envision this color work evolving? Do you think it’ll evolve into a project like Big Hair & True Love? The debate about whether or not to work within the confines of a project comes up frequently amongst street photographers. I know for some it really helps them focus and refine the work, while others prefer to less structure and try to avoid confining themselves to themes. And then there are others who will shoot, shoot, shoot and find themes and a project during the editing process. I know that might be sort of an involved question but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

As far as projects go, I tend to be more of the latter type, the editor who sees themes emerging in the editing. For example, I have recently noticed a lot of photos that have someone standing out from a group, a person there but apart. This may have emerged from my own life experience. We moved a lot when I was young, and this continued into my adult life. I have often felt like a third wheel, someone who was not really a part of the group, thus notice this when I’m shooting. This is trickier to see and record, as it isn’t as brightly obvious as was “Big Hair…” was in the early ‘90’s.

In making some recent edits, I have been trying to consciously break the tyranny of place and chronology, to organize more by mood and distance. This is difficult as I remember images in my head based on just that – when and where I was when I made a picture.

Another problem with editing a theme via the image inventory is that some images will be color and some black and white. They do not often mix well when put together. My personal preference is for all one or the other. As I shoot more color and the depth of the back-catalog deepens, it will be easier to put together a thematically-related body of color work.

But for now, I have to get out and shoot! I shall continue to work as I always have, walking the streets with my camera. The difference now is that more often than not it is a camera recording color images digitally. I still go out with black and white film, but much less than I used to. The photographs I make are the same as I have always made, but with the added difficulty of the complex variable of color.

With the popularity of street photography these days, there’s also an appetite to learn and pick up pointers. There are some blogs out there that offer insights but not too many. I think many people new to street photography often suffer from a lack of feedback or knowledge sharing. With that said, what tips or words of wisdom would you offer photographers that are hungry and just hitting the streets.

Several thoughts in no particular order:

Educate yourself. Go to the library (it’s free!) and look at pictures by great photographers in books like “Bystander: A History of Street Photography” by Joel Meyerowitz & Colin Westerbeck, or “The Photographer’s Eye” by John Szarkowski. These are seminal texts. It is easier to study a photograph if you can hold it in your hand and contemplate it. Why does a particular picture hold your interest – or not? Where are the subjects in the frame? What is going on in front, in back, in your head? Look at photographers’ monographs and decide who you like and who you don’t, and think about the reasons why. Why is this photographer considered great even though you may not think much of their work? You can disagree, but you need to understand what the attraction is.

Whatever camera you have with you, DSLR, rangefinder, or camera-phone, know it backwards and forwards so you can use it fast! Know what it will do and what it won’t do. All cameras have their limitations, so learn what they are and work within them. With most compact or point-and-shoots the biggest problem is shutter lag so learn to anticipate and compensate for it. The difference between getting a good photo and one that doesn’t is a fraction of a second, and will not wait while you’re fiddling with the gear. (As my mother used to say to my father on family vacations, “Bob, while you’re fiddling with that camera, the herd of buffalo is moving on.”)

Bad weather can make good photographs.

If you are nervous about getting close to your subjects, the best place to get over it is the big public event, like a parade or street fair. There are crowds of people, all with cameras, all taking pictures right and left. You will not be noticed. Dare yourself to see how close you can get to your subject. Can you take a picture of a stranger while standing right next to them? A big crowd is the place to practice.

The two most important tools are a sturdy comfortable pair of shoes and a well-used wastebasket. Shoot a lot, then throw out most of it.

Do not worry about asking permission first. If you do, the result will not be what drew you to a scene or what you saw happening in the first place. It may still turn out to be a good photograph, a good casual portrait, but it will be different. If they see you, they see you. A fast smile and a humble manner will get you past it. However, respect your subjects as fellow human beings. If someone says, “Don’t take my picture,” don’t take their picture! There are always more people and other photographs elsewhere. “The better part of valour is discretion.”

Most of the time you will not come home with a great photo; no one does. Do not be easily satisfied. This is what I see most often: lazy ordinary pictures, in focus, exposed properly and with nothing in them at all. Yawn.

Beware the Siren call of the funny costume.

You must learn to be your own toughest critic. If there’s an “if only…” or “I should have…” or “A second earlier…” the photo does not work. No amount of excuses will make it do so, no matter how hard you tried or what you hoped would be there. It is either in the rectangle or it isn’t.

While it feels good, pay less attention to the “Great picture, man. You really nailed it.” Listen to those who say ‘That doesn’t work” and ask why not. Attaboys teach you little – tough critics teach you a lot.

A story: In 1994, I was accepted into a major show called “100 Years of Street Photography.” One of the jurors was Colin Westerbeck, then curator at the Chicago Art Institute. I threw a whole lot of photos in a box and took them with me to the opening. As I walked in, there was one of my photos hanging between Stieglitz and Evans. I was floating on air. There I met Mr. Westerbeck and asked him if he would take a look at my pictures. He said that while he didn’t have time for a full critique, he’d take a quick look. He flipped through them without speaking and at the end he said “There are some very good pictures here, some ordinary pictures, and some I never should have seen. You need to be a much better editor of your own work.” I was brought right back down to the ground hard, and never forgot it.

If you are hungry, don’t look to Street Photography to assuage the hunger. You will not earn a living from it directly.

Enjoy yourself. Go throw some light on pixels or film. Photographer, go make photographs!

All Photographs ©Richard Bram

Spyro Palamaras

Australian street photography is all about light and people who love living outdoors.  You can’t escape it, you can’t ignore it: it will inevitably take over your photography.  This light is just too tempting, too easy to just drop exposure by 2 stops, get some contrasty film (or fake it in photoshop) and let the colours and blacks pop.  Trent Parke showed the way with Dream/Life, Narelle Autio with her beach series, Jesse Marlow with graphic colourful content and many others.  Andrew Stark breaks the mold a little bit; his photography could have been in many places.  And all the others have done different work as well, but at the end of the day Australian street photographers will be collectively remembered for the gloriously illuminated busy streets, parks and beaches.  Personally I’m addicted, when Melbs is overcast (which is half the time) I don’t even want to go shooting.

©John Goldsmith

John Goldsmith
As the sun last rolled over the equator, I found myself on the flipside of the hemispheres; a six month migration. Australia, unlike Canada, which goes Arctic, a good portion of this place sits in Capricorn’s house. Instead of light slicing on oblique angles, here, in the summer, it stamps down hard on the herd like a white-hot branding iron. Magnum’s Jonas Bendikson says: “The worse the weather, the better the picture.” It seems to me that Aussie photographers might adjust that the quote to read: the more extreme the weather, the better the picture.

Melbourne has a far different feel than my home city of 8 years where clouds reign supreme for much of the year. While my move north of the 49th parallel wasn’t related to photography or the weather, I can’t help but recall the impressionist painters, like Van Gogh and Cezanne, both of whom migrated periodically to the south of France for its quality of light. And while Vancouver is referred to as Canada’s Riviera, it is nothing of the sort, excepting cold sea water, imported palm trees, and that massive French enclave only 4000km to the east.

Life down under is different. Even with its brightness, this is Trent Parke‘s “dark country.” Like its history, the shadows have weight. They give structure to composition. The cowboy Ned Kelly once roamed these parts. He wore a dark armoured suit made of cast iron. While this protected him from bullets, the sun was another likely other adversary. With a small slit made for his eyes, I can only imagine how the light blazed through as the bushranger rode high atop his horse during the midday. If nothing more, it must have cooked inside that iron stove. Though, if his last words were any indication, the conditions in that suit were no trouble for the bandit. As he said: “Such is Life.” I’ll take it too, at least, for as long as I can muster.

©Nowhere Man (aka Andrew Stark)

Nowhere Man (aka Andrew Stark)
I would suggest that there probably is, (a distinct uniqueness of Australian street photography) however I feel it’s so understated and undefined as to be almost uncharacterizable (that’s 3 ‘un’s’ in the one sentence – unbelievable ! (Unreal – Ed).).

It’s certainly not stylistically based, for the ‘Down Under’ range is vast – from Trent Parkes cinematic, almost special effect outlook through to Roger Scott’s sociologically driven, gentle observation. There is no discernible uniformity to be found …

I do feel the common thread lies however with the personality of the nation. For any Aussie street photographer I’ve ever come across has had a fairly laid back or laconic persona; a trait which of course mirrors the well ingrained, Chips Rafferty meets Paul Hogan Australian characteristic.

… and the more I scribble (by way of a response), the more I’m drawn toward that humble yet magically multi faceted adjective, “dry”. For as a race of people, Australians tend toward the quietly ironic – we are sardonic, understated and deviously droll …not aggressively insistent like the Americans nor do we posses the refined qualities of European urbanity. No, Australia is a parched and thirsty nation, and this I feel is self evident when interpreting our street work.

Our climate is a deathly dehydrated one (except when it’s bucketing down with rain), our humour is moisture-less, and I’d proffer that Aussie street photography is as philosophically dry as the proverbial ‘dead dingos donger’.

…and of course a further commonality is that we all work using the same harsh, unforgiving light … that unmated solar beam which courses into our UV friendly corner like sleepy dust into a well rested, bacterially conjunctive left peeper.

©Phill Hunt

Phill Hunt
I’m not sure I buy the “uniqueness” of Australian street photography but I would agree with others who describe a distinguishing quality to the Australian light. Paul Kelly, as usual, put it best when he sang; “Sydney shines such a beautiful light”. It takes a poet to describe in 6 words what others have taken pages to do.

I first saw the light in Sydney during what I considered a holiday but has been described by family members as an odyssey; an ordeal. In the end, it was an awakening.

To me Sydney was, and remains, the spiritual home of Australian street photography. Trent Parke’s office worker with backpack in the summer storm and “Today Coldwater” are as iconic of Australian photography as the Coat Hangar is of the Harbour. Roger Scott, John Williams, Philip Quirk and Robert McFarlane shot some of their best stuff in Sydney. And of course it’s the home of the enigmatic Andrew Stark: street photographer, rock aficionado and existentialist essayist, whose book; “Escaping into Life” opened my eyes to the strange back-story of street photography and those that practice it. It was Andrew who described street photography as the “visual documentation of a long walk”. Or words to that effect.

But I don’t live in Sydney, I live in Adelaide. What I have learned though is that the “light” is everywhere given the correct conditions and proper time. You just have to be patient and learn where, when and how to look.

I haven’t quite got there yet. I’m still practicing, looking and learning.

John Williams
I don’t think there is such a thing as a “unique aesthetic to Australian street photography” nor do I believe there can, or even should be. What is unique about Australian street photographs is that they are made of people in Australian environments. When all said and done, no honest street photographer can or should create an environment. All he or she can do is report on it, hopefully seizing on its essence, if you like.

Having said that, “great” photographers do clearly have the ability to transform a situation by putting a stamp of their own upon it. Robert Frank (a Swiss), Henri Cartier Bresson (a Frenchman) and Andre Kertesz (an Hungarian) leave us with images of the USA that add to our understanding and knowledge but which are distinct to each. In other words, their ‘ways of seeing’ matter much more than their nationality.

I suppose the nearest thing a national school of street photography that I’m aware of, would that represented by the likes of Winogrand, Harbutt and Uzzle (to name but a few) in the 1970s. This could be called American if you like, but is really (in my opinion) Robert Frankian, or least deriving from and inspired by his seminal work of the 1950s.

For what its worth, I am the photographic product of “The Family of Man” (which I saw in Sydney in the late 1950s) mixed up with Frank and Kertesz. Does that make me Swiss, or Hungarian, or American? When I began taking pictures seriously there were only camera clubs. I can honestly say that Australian influences upon me — and predominant influences are necessary in the creation of any national aesthetic — are nil.

The photo was made in Martin Place Sydney a couple of years ago. Nowadays almost everything I shoot is a panorama. But I’d still like to think that there’s a persistency of vision that links this picture to the photos of Sydney I made in the 1950s and 1960s.

Keep up the Good Work.

I think it’s great that things are stirring and people are thinking about photography as an insight into our lives and times.

Katrin Koenning
To me, perhaps the one most unique thing about Australian street
photography is purely geographical –intensity and harshness of light
are unlike anywhere else. It might take a photographer from, say,
Europe some time to adjust. European light is gentle, caressing almost.
Australian light is no less exciting though – in fact, once you’ve worked
out how to use it in your favour rather than against you, it is exhilarating.
You find yourself forever chasing, as if you were performing a never-
ending, invisible Waltz. It changes so fast. 

The difference is in the visual aesthetic – images made on Australian
 streets draw upon this intensity. They are the perfect synthesis of light
 and dark, of singing colours and deep shadows. Australian exemplars of
the genre that have mastered the Waltz with the light are photographers 
such as Narelle Autio and Trent Parke.

While street photography is specific in telling the story of a particular
 culture at a particular time and place, it has a thread running through it 
that defies boundaries of any kind – it speaks about public lives of a 21st
Century global community. Common visual languages are those that 
search for humour, absurdities of the everyday, and feelings of isolation
 and alienation, to name a few. These languages, I believe, are cross-
cultural.

Interview by Jeanette O’Keefe

Over the past 10 years, Cary has been documenting life in New York. A real love for the city is evident in his black and white photographs. His work embodies an energy and grittiness hidden to the casual eye, but captured by those like him who observe closely and deeply integrate themselves into their surroundings. In 2000 he started posting his work online at Visual Diaries and in 2008 created CaryConover.com.  I’m so glad to interview Cary before he moves to Kansas with his wife Yvonne and their newborn son Julian at the end of November, where he will teach photography.

“Looking Back: New York (2000-2010)” – a mini-retrospective of Cary’s New York photographs – can be seen starting October 19 at Lunasa (126 First Avenue, New York, NY).

Can you tell us a little bit about your background before you came to New York? What were you shooting in your early years after college? What kind of assignments did you enjoy shooting for the newspaper in Michigan?

I enrolled at Kansas State University knowing I was going to be a photographer, I went there specifically for the yearbook, The Royal Purple. So all throughout college there was a pretty strong photography staff, especially considering there was no official photojournalism major at K-State. So that was an early influence right there, the idea of a strong tradition for photography.

It was expected that you would apply for summer internships at newspapers. My internships really shaped my photography, not so much because they allowed me to shoot “real world” news and stuff, but that they let me get out to see other parts of the country, out into the “real world” as it were. That’s when the real “street photographer” in me came out, 1994-96, during my internships in Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire. On these internships, I would shoot my assignments for the newspaper, then on my off hours I’d have all this extra time to do my own shooting. Imagine being paid to go away for a summer, work at a newspaper, but have all your free time devoted to exploring a new region of the country. So I came away from those internships with a lot of outtake pictures. Those outtakes became my portfolio, more so than the news and sports I was paid/hired to photograph.

My first job after college in Michigan, at The Monroe Evening News, I wanted to be at a place that would sort of allow me to nurture this “extra” photography, a place where I could sort of continue working on the outtakes, all the while doing really good work for publication in the next day’s paper. I would say my favorite assignments in Michigan at that first job were weekend community assignments. I’d get an assignment to photograph, say, a pumpkin patch or an apple orchard opening and there were just a lot of opportunities to come away with great pictures…both ones to be submitted to the newspaper for publication–that told a wider story to a broad audience–as well as other pictures to sort of mull over afterwards, my own little experiments within community photojournalism, pictures I would share with other photographer friends.

Another example is that I’d have a Friday night football game to shoot for the sports section of my paper, but it was the halftime pictures, the teenagers canoodling under the bleachers, that I lived for capturing, as opposed to the decisive game-winning touchdown photo. Well those, too, but I was very good at creating work “on demand” under deadline pressure but also very prolific creating my own body of more personal, nuanced work.

What made you want to move to New York from Michigan?

After nearly four years in Michigan I was ready for a change. I had visited Paris for ten days in 1999 and I had absolutely loved it, and I my hope was that a bigger city would be in my future. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t envision applying for jobs at bigger newspapers–I remember telling myself at the time that I was happier being a big fish in a small pond. I liked the idea of freelancing, as I had friends who were freelancers in DC. Turns out one of them, Patrick Witty, was moving up to New York and looking for a roommate.

So we basically went half and half on the deposit for a one-bedroom apartment on Stanton Street, just off Bowery. He moved up in June, I came later in August. Before long we had a rotating cast of roommates, including one, Craig Allen, who unfolded a cot every night and slept in the kitchen. Those were really fun times, it felt like one big party. A bit of that care-free life went away with the trauma that was 9/11.

What kind of assignments have you had in New York through the years? Any particularly memorable ones that you could share?

Many of my assignments for the Village Voice were nightlife-related events. A lot of live music, parties, restaurants, bars, etc. But also a lot of alternative lifestyle stuff, I did a lot of work dealing with the LGBT community, tenants-rights stuff, issues dealing with the unions, etc. The Voice sent me to cover the New Hampshire primary in early 2004, that was my first big assignment from them, from anyone really.

In late 2004 I started doing a lot for The New York Times, and that was a lot more breaking news, courthouse and City Hall beat stuff. A lot more grueling in the sense that most of that NYT work was last-minute but that’s the way this business works sometimes. With the Voice I almost always had a day or two notice, then again the Voice is a weekly. And I shot film until around May of 2004, so it was a nice leisurely stroll up Bowery to the Voice offices to drop off my rolls and captions the next morning after an assignment.

Once I had gone digital it felt natural to start taking on a bigger workload of assignments from the Times. So 2005, 2006 were great years for me freelancing. As for memorable assignments, the Republican National Convention in 2004 was a really fun thing to photograph, I actually got credentialed onto the main floor for The Voice.

Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between shooting assignments for the Village Voice, NYTimes, etc. and shooting your own street work? Would your method change at all?

One distinction I make between work/personal is that work is color (digital) and personal is black and white (film). Another huge difference between photojournalism vs. my own work is the whole gathering of names, caption info, etc. When I’m on assignment I would talk to my subjects quite a bit, and it’s important to remember that I’m representing a news organization. When I’m doing my own shooting I don’t talk to anybody. My assignments were always at a specific location, whereas my personal work was always more the result of long, drifting excursions out into the city, quick errands as well. But even when I was on assignments I’d always have a film camera loaded with Tri-X with me, always. When I wasn’t working I’d leave my digital gear at home. I still do, although on countless occasions I’d get a last-minute assignment and be off on some breaking news story, stopping at home first to get my digital gear of course.

When you’re shooting your own personal work on the street, is there anything in particular that helps you get into a good zone or state of mind for shooting?

It’s funny because I definitely never use the phrase “in the zone” in regards to shooting. Maybe if I’m playing pool and I’m having a good night then I’ll use that phrase. “State of mind” feels much better, and lots of things put me in a nice state of mind for photography.

Usually it’s something fleeting or ephemeral that causes me to get my camera out, an atmospheric change, leaves scuttling across the street on the first real day of fall, an unexpected light rain during an otherwise perfect day. Or, sometimes I just feel like visiting an old block that I used to live on and all I want to do is revisit a previous time and place I once occupied. Or I saw a great movie the night before that had a noir-ish feel, or a really strong exhibition. Sometimes there’ll a big story in the news such as Hurricane Katrina, a presidential election, or the Ground Zero Mosque and I get into a mood for photographing rallies, protests, activism, etc. Washington Square Park and Union Square Park are really good for these kinds of things.

It’s hard to explain but I’ve gone through phases over the past several years. At one point I was in my “walks phase” where I’d take 2 or 3 really long walks a day, or one really epic one like up to Central Park and back, just walking around in flip-flops on the hottest day of the year, coldest day of the year, whatever, just soaking everything in. Other times I wouldn’t photograph people but would be more into “seizing forms.” Then other phases I’ve gone through are more about nightlife, just going out to the bars and photographing people in the East Village, Lower East Side, playing pool, having a fun time, smoking outside, etc. Now, and it’s probably because I’m leaving NYC soon, I’m trying to capture the skyline more. One of the loops I’ve made a lot more recently is around the World Trade Center site, now that construction  has kicked into high gear. That’s one story that takes years to tell, and it gets more into the “long-form photojournalism” that I like.

More than anything, there really isn’t an on or off switch with my photography. Or hasn’t been I should say. Now that I have a newborn son he just feels so fragile and I haven’t bothered with carrying any camera, and just yesterday I was walking up Broadway and saw a photo I definitely would have taken. It was that French culinary school NE corner of Broadway and Broome, and there was a man eating by himself up high in the window and then an androgynous woman standing outside below him… and she resembled the man, or vice versa.

Who are some of your influences?

So, so many. I lean toward prolific mid-century FSA and Photo League shooters and pertaining specifically to New York, “New York School” shooters such as Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Louis Faurer, Leon Levinstein, Ted Croner, Weegee, etc.

It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Cartier-Bresson, I would have loved to have shaken that man’s hand. Garry Winogrand is a great character, but I don’t obsess over him like many others have, I find him a bit too sidewalk-y, too daylight-y. I’ve run into Robert Frank several times in my neighborhood, he’s an icon. Lee Friedlander I’ve run into as well. I love Elliott Erwitt’s work. I ran into Richard Kalvar on the subway once and we chatted for a few stops, he was a nice guy, I’ve tried to keep in touch. Love a lot of Gene Smith’s work, he’s also from Wichita. I had a big Ralph Gibson phase, and I still really dig his stuff.

Closer to my age I like Trent Parke, Gus Powell, both have been really nice to me. But also some of my closest friends, who are also photographers, have been big influences, Aris Economopoulos, Patrick Witty, Andy Cutraro, Matt Smolinsky.

Then are just totally unknown, obscure people. For example there’s a guy who shot a lot in the 1960s, Robert Otter. I run into his son Ned all the time, he sells his father’s black and white prints in Washington Square Park. More and more the people I am blown away by are the people I’ve just discovered for the first time, today it was Samuel Gottscho, whose name I remember but I can never seem to commit to memory. Eugene de Salignac is a guy who was shooting for the NYC department of bridges around the turn of the century, his work is just amazing to look at today.

In a couple of weeks, you’ll be leaving New York and moving to Kansas where you’ll teach photography. Have you come up with any sort of philosophy on how you will teach photography to kids completely new to the field?

Teaching professionally has been a goal of mine for quite a few years. The reasons for this are many, but nowhere among them is the idea that I have some super-valuable knowledge or wisdom that my students must possess in order to succeed. I have a pretty healthy ego, but it doesn’t belong in the classroom. Granted, I certainly have real-world experiences that will inform my teaching, certain anecdotes that I can share–and certainly my own experiences as a high school photographer 20 years ago. But more than anything I want to awaken and ignite any creative energy and talent my students may have, latent or otherwise. I want to impart on them the philosophy that none of us are really ever finished learning. And I want to do better than many of my own high school teachers, who were content to instruct me to merely read the textbook. I went to a public high school and I feel that’s where I really flourished growing up.

High school is such a crucial time, so much going on, and I’m so stoked that I’ll have a good chance of being a positive and reinforcing influence for my students.

What will you miss most about New York?

Friends, mostly. But the city as well, for sure. I’ve always thought you could live fifty lifetimes here and not capture everything. I captured a lot in my 10 years here, I’m pretty proud of the work I did. I even got to drive a taxi for a while! And I certainly wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t totally in love with the city. But it can be a grueling existence for a freelancer, or any other type of creative person. So I’m looking forward to the stability of teaching, health insurance, my family to help with our baby, etc. So for those reasons I don’t have any regrets leaving whatsoever. And at the same time I don’t have a fear that I’ll never ever be able to come return. That’s for sure–New York City isn’t going anywhere.

Cary Conover is a freelance photographer based in New York City. A native of Wichita, Kansas, he attended Kansas State University from 1992-1996. In 1996 he began working as a staff photographer at the Monroe (Michigan) Evening News, which published his first book, titled “Black Book: A Visual Diary” in 2000. That summer he moved to New York City and began his freelance career. He’s been a regular contributor for both The Village Voice and The New York Times. Cary is perhaps best know for his black and white photography, which has been exhibited in group shows at the now-defunct CBGB’s and Ariel Meyerowitz Galleries. It’s also been a staple of his long-running website visualdiaries.com and now at caryconover.com. Cary and wife Yvonne and their newborn son Julian live in the Lower East Side. Cary teaches photography every summer to high schoolers at the Flint HIlls Publications Workshop in Manhattan, KS and plans to return to Wichita to teach photojournalism at Andover High School beginning in early 2011.

MS: If I’m honest, none of them are accidents. They’re all things that I look really hard to find, and you find them and go bloody hell. Sometimes you’re in a zone, it’s like meditation, and you’re walking around hours upon hours and you can almost predict something is about to happen before it happens. I think positivity and happiness and the way I deal with people makes me lucky. Which sounds crazy. I’m not positive the whole time though—that would be ridiculous. Some days, I’m going out and I’m on patrol: I’m making sure that nothing’s going to happen. And generally those days nothing happens. And the days that I pretend that I’ve just landed from Mars on planet Earth and everything is amazing, completely amazing, and I look at things with kid eyes—those are the days that generally, things happen. Some days you have a feeling like it’s following you, which is great.

via More Intelligent Life

Great interview with Matt Stuart.  Check out more of his work on iN-PUBLiC.