In every village, town or city there is more than likely to be some stalwart of photography. A photographer who at one point or another will have shown their work around extensively, appeared in local news, in the paper or speaking on the radio, maybe even running their own gallery. This is pretty much how I became aware of the work of Berris Conolly who is a photographer based in Sheffield.

I wasn’t exactly aware of his work, but I’d been a resident artist/curator at a local gallery for a couple of weeks and his name had already cropped up a few times: “You should speak to Berris.”

Berris used to be part of a dedicated photography gallery in Sheffield, the untitled gallery, which later became known as site gallery, and after moving from photography to lens based media then visual art, it’s almost lost all of it’s identity and the city most of it’s photography output.

I jumped onto the internet to do a bit of hunting and discovered his website and his work. Like many photographers out there his work hadn’t really done the rounds much on the internet. I suppose coming from a different model of photography where prints were more important to getting work out there than pixels, this is to be understood.

I found his work full of charm and simplicity in a strange sort of way and given the glowing recommendations I’d received I thought it was only right that I actually meet the man to discuss his work and the scene in Sheffield a little.
When I did speak with him, he spoke about a specific picture which he became known for in the local area, and I could understand why. The image in question was of a local landmark which was now lost forever. A massive “hole in the road” as it became known, existed in the city I grew up in and a photograph of it by Berris donned many a wall of local people, including that of my parents’.

His work I suppose is documentary landscapes, and despite being produced in and of the streets, but I don’t think street photography would ever be where Berris considers his work to lay. It’s more urban landscapes actually, occasionally occupied with people. He said as much to me when I spoke to him about his Hackney photographs work last year.

“There’s no format concept to my photography, I photograph whats on my doorstep” was  one thing he mentioned which I suppose does describe his work in the simplest ways. Berris left his job as studio photographer in order to be more creative with his work: “I’d been photographing catalogues of watches, not exactly a creative use of photography, even if for some time I did actually enjoy it. I was heavily influenced by great photographers such as John Davies and Lee Friedlander and I felt I needed to leave the studio to produce the sort of work I enjoyed looking at, and to become an independent photographer.” and this work was his local haunt at the time.

Adrian Wynn says it better than I could in the statenent for Hackney Revisited, which I’ll discuss later:

“In his spare time [Berris] walked the borough, noting the street corners, the facades and signage of the city, following the waterways and exploring the aesthetics of the ordinary – what is seen and how it might be seen. Some of the photographs from that period form the basis of this exhibition. 
Memories of the 1981 city riots were still fresh, and the Metropolitan Police had lately been earning their overtime in the northern coalfields, public services in Hackney, as elsewhere, were under assault from the advocates of the political and economic virtues of market forces. Conolly is not directly concerned with this narrative, he was walking his usual beat, assessing the visual weight of the everyday, sifting it and sieving it, ensuring that his camera bestows on the commonplace its due dignity.”

Berris continued this form of photography when he moved to Sheffield, documenting it’s river bridges and the developments which were taking place in the run up to the world student games in 1991.

Architecture forms much of the basis of his work. From general street scenes with the buildings bustling with one another for attention, to photographs showing these buildings in context to their environment.

“I’d occasionally wait for someone to walk through a scene and fill a certain space or perform a specific role but people were never really the main focus. From time to time I’d get children come up to me and pose for a photograph, like the River Lea image, I didn’t ask them or position them, it’s just what came natural to them and I suppose it would almost have been rude not to”

For me the images do speak of a different time, when children would do things like this and there wasn’t as much of a stigma placed onto the shoulders of photographers as there is today. The photographs are largely about nostalgia and I imagine are stronger images today than they were when they were taken. Berris mentioned in passing that he wished he’d taken more straight documentary images of the surrounding areas too because as time passed he could see the value in these types of images more clearly.

Berris left photography in the mid 90′s only to return to it some years later as he began digitally archiving his negatives. His digital revalation didn’t stop there as he’d later pick up a digital camera and begin going over his work again looking at how the world had changed.

Something I take from Berris’ work and his journey (photographs aside) is that I imagine there are many other photographers out there in these local regions, whose work, whilst well known to the small art circles in that geographical location, are largely unknown to the rest of the world and more specifically the photography consumers on the internet. It almost seems a shame to not share this work and bring fresh eyes to it which I suppose is my driving thought behind this post.

My previous post to this is also a similar story. Paul Baldesare’s work has hung in quite a few galleries, but I only became aware of his work with thanks to fellow photographer Matt Stuart, who passed on my details when Paul was enquiring about a website for his work.

How many photographers are there out there who remain relatively unknown to the internet circles or our internet circles? Is it here where we could find this elusive definitive body of London street photography work which Martin Parr feels we currently lack? And if so how are we to find it? Is there a London equivalent of Vivian Maier somewhere out there that is waiting to be discovered?

You can see more of Berris’ work on his website along with the interesting project of revisiting the Hackney images with photographer Alex Pink.

With bodies of work ranging from it’s main transportation method, the buying habits of the inhabitants and how they spend their leisure time, it’s easy to say you’re work largely concentrates on the documentation of London.

Most of my projects are shot in and around London simply because that’s where I live and work and the place that has influenced me visually and emotionally since a child. In the last three decades the fabric of London has undergone many changes and it is these changes that have increasingly influenced the projects I’ve undertaken.  It’s also important for me when developing a project to be able to return to a location again and again if necessary to refine and improve rather than hopping around from one distant location to another, spending most of my time traveling rather than photographing. From home I can be in in a Central London train terminal in half an hour and start shooting while on the train.

A project which I finished around five years ago “The English Carnival Event” was shot over a twelve year period simply because I couldn’t find carnival events that were representative of what I felt was ‘Englishness’ in London so it necessitated travelling often many hours from my base and sometimes staying overnight.]

This type of project would now be a problem financially and again sitting behind the wheel of a car seems to me a waste of time.

Martin Parr recently said in an online discussion, that he felt “It is strange that when one thinks of New York we think of those bustling streets and the many great street photographers who have worked them, yet despite the revival, there is no real ultimate body of work on the streets of London”. What’s you’re reaction to this?

It has some truth to it but it certainly isn’t the whole truth.  There are some fine bodies of work taken in London some examples of which appeared in the ‘London Street Photography Exhibition’ at the Museum of London last year, although there were many important omissions.

The photographers that come to mind are Paul Trevor in particular a fine photographer who should be better known and in particular his personal long term project ‘EastEnder’. Also Roger Maynes project on the streets around North Kensington which has at least been well published and exhibited recently. Bert Hardy’s candid street photos, Marketa Luskacova’s long term project on Spitalfields and Brick Lane Market, to name a few. These photographers often show working class communities at a time of great social change, but often found it difficult to get their work seen by a larger audience. The internet has given photographers greater opportunities to show their work and this has clearly been taken up by a new breed of street photographer’s with a more modernist approach to the subject which makes the more traditional documentary approach look very much of a different time, although no doubt this will be the same in time for the work presently being shot. When I started photography seriously in the early eighties there were very few outlets for ‘independent ‘photographers i.e. those engaged in their own projects and not with any commercial or journalistic value.

The photography that I’m engaged upon in London is still very much work in progress, although it would be good to think that some of it would be a bench mark of our ‘time’ in the future but there is still a long way to go. I would add though these are exciting times for street photography in London with many fine young practitioners who will hopefully be there for the long haul and not be put off by the fickle nature of the photo establishment and public.

But to get back to M.P. comment:  I would add that the States has a stronger tradition of street photography simply because culturally it’s had a stronger photographic tradition which was not stifled by a class and economic system that restricted access to talented individuals to the medium, although we shouldn’t believe that they were any more able to give up the day job to follow their passion.  It’s easy to forget that photography in this country has only recently been accepted into our major galleries and their collections. Briton for long time was a photographic back water and it wasn’t until well into the latter half of the twentieth century that photography became accepted within the established visual arts scene.

You’re work down the tube has a very intimate feel to it and instantly takes me back to almost any journey on the tube where I will ultimately end up people watching, what was it that drew you into documenting this?

I’d been away from London for three years and I was living only five minutes’ walk from a tube station so I started to use it to travel around Central London to photograph at various locations. The more I travelled the more I saw and I began to spend more and more time on the tube and at a variety of different times. After a month I had several images that I was pleased with so I continued with the goal of producing a series on the tube which initially I thought would take around a year.

Could you explain a little about how you worked on down the tube, were the photographs taken on a daily route to work, did you purposely travel extensively just to document, which lines did you find most interesting etc.

I would purposely travel to photograph on the tube although some images were taken on the way to a job or on social occasions going into town, I’ve always travelled with a camera and it still surprises me how often I get an image when I’m not actively looking for it.

I shot the pictures candidly and rarely with the camera to the eye. The reasons were that the angle of view was much more interesting shot from the waist, it made the pictures more feel more believable and also most importantly I wasn’t influencing the outcome of the situation.  It took only a couple of weeks to work out how to shoot this way i.e. I was no longer cropping people’s heads off or getting too many off centre shots, very few of the images in either tube projects had to be realigned or cropped when printed.

I kept things very simple. I used a Leica M series camera fitted with a 28mm lens set to 60^th second at 2.8, pre focused to four and a half feet when sitting across to the subject. I worked out the distance from camera to subject for a variety of different situations and could easily alter this when needed. The exposure on the trains was ninety per cent of the time the same nothing more was used other than a small piece of electrical tape to stop the aperture ring from being knocked accidently. I started later in the project to carry a backup Leica CL with a 40mm lens for the rare occasions I put the camera to eye. The camera was either on my lap on a camera bag or padded plastic bag to steady it or when standing I shot from the hip. The most interesting lines for me were the Central and Piccadilly but when I went back and reshot the project in colour in the 1990’s I travelled more on the Circle and District lines, simply because Id shot very little material on them in the 1980’s.

In you’re series “New London” you mention that “The centre of London is no longer lived in the same way as many other large cities”, how do you feel this effects the overall street photography in the country’s capital?

It’s probably true of most capital cities in Europe now with the cost of building land. But In London it seems to be truer.
There are clearly exceptions but you only have to walk around Central London at the weekend to see how empty some areas are. This certainly would not have been true a generation ago, but large numbers of people have moved out of Central London so leaving a vacuum of offices and shops, people no longer living next to or close to their jobs. This is probably why so many street photographers in London are attracted to Oxford and Regents Street and its surrounding areas, the busyness and variety can’t be found in such abundance at other locations. It certainly makes things harder, I tend to walk around more to find locations that appeal to me and return to successful areas more then I really want to. The main plus with busy shopping areas is that the back drop of shop windows and hoardings around new or refurbished shops is regularly changing. The other plus is the number of events that take place around the year. These seem to have increased in recent years. There are the traditional London street events such  as the Lord Major of London Parade  or the newer Westminster Show on New Year’s Day but a new generation of party goers who dress up in a variety of guises including Santa’s and Zombies take advantage of the streets and the many pubs in Central London. So it’s not all bad and it’s important that Street Photographers respond to the changing face of the city and not stay to long with the tried and tested, it’s good to get out of a comfort zone before the work become staid and a pastiche of what we’ve already done.

You can see more of Paul’s work on his website: http://baldesarepaul.com/

“Every once in a while I hear somebody talk about the SP gods being kind or unkind regarding the relatively lucky or unlucky elements in a particular photograph. I guess I am an SP atheist, or some shit, because I believe there is no god, and only dumb luck. Day after day, week after week, I try to eliminate as much luck as I can, in a concentrated effort to make a good picture. In most cases I fail, and in very few and far between instances I succeed. Either way, I prefer to claim credit for my occasional success and own my failures. There is no god, if there ever was one, he is dead now.” – Justin Vogel

flickr.com/photos/justinsdisgustin

I grew up on a farm in Virginia and until high school, I was more interested in photographing what my telescope could see in the night sky than what lurks on a crowded sidewalk. The arrival of my family’s first digital camera brought my interests to a more terrestrial level. The seemingly infinite frames set aside any hesitation I had on “wasting” the more finite medium of film.

I used to be terrified of talking to strangers until I received assignments from a local newspaper, breaking my fear and thus opening me up to a new world. The camera has since become my best tool for exploration. The photograph may seem a rough sketch, but it’s the best I have to remember and see into dimensions I could not dream of. There is a kind of clarity seeing a photograph and not being told what to hear, similar to hearing someone speak without seeing them.

New York, where I take most of my photographs, is a vastly different setting compared to where I first became a photographer. As I walk along the streets of New York, I can’t help but notice that technology is not always a seamless incorporation into an otherwise ordinary life. The city I live in today has a distinctly different feeling than the city in the photographs of Winogrand and Freidlander taken in the 1960’s. I am interested in worlds, and sometimes, quite literally people, colliding. It is these points of intersection and convergence that I seek. In an ever-changing environment, street photography allows me to explore my fascination with my surroundings and with people in an unrivaled way.

After experimenting with project ideas and running with themes, I find myself coming back to the realisation that I function better looking at a variety of subject matter. In short, I like to mix it up.

It takes some time, but I love the idea and process of putting together disparate pictures- often taken in different environments that contain a similar message, even if that’s just a gesture or matching colour. Having just put together a self-published book along this line, this is how I now want to progress.

Over the last 5 years I have visited loads of weekend events (animal shows, living history events, modeller conventions). The street stuff has almost been like filler – something to do during weekdays. As well as the challenge it’s the fascination of having no idea what image I’ll be left with that keeps me going.

As a carer for my Son (who has a rare metabolic condition called Hurlers) I have fairly limited day-to-day travel opportunity. Taking pictures has, especially recently, become, a therapeutic occupation. I’m lucky as I have a couple of hours each morning, whilst the kids are in school or nursery. It’s perhaps not the greatest time of day, in terms of numbers of people out and about, but I think that makes me look harder. I live by the sea (south coast of England) so during summer months there’s at least some action. My home situation has also given me the opportunity to get to some garden centres and shoot there. I enjoy watching the hen-pecked husbands carting around topsoil and the bored teenagers- perhaps this sums up my where my interest lies- in the psychology of situations.

On the rare occasion I get to central London it’s almost overwhelming. Then again, it can feel like ‘shooting fish in a barrel’- a luxury. I’m interested in pictures that subvert what’s happening- one’s with degrees of ambiguity or ones that look just plain odd. More than often, I’ll just end up with a ‘gag’ shot. The real challenge is getting beyond this. – Justin Sainsbury

“I was meant to be going on holiday to Tokyo, Japan in two weeks time with my wife and 6 month old baby. With the devastation in the country now putting that out of the question, participating in the Charity Print Auctions seemed the very least I could do to help out.” says London based street photographer Stephen Leslie, who is auctioning off a copy of his self published book Snaps.

Stephen who started taking photography seriously about ten years ago, had been working as a TV documentary maker before he began making photographs on a daily basis in order to “keep [his] eye in”.

“I tend to focus on unusual characters and humorous or bizarre situations. I’m a screenwriter by profession, so I tend to look for narratives or faces that tell stories.”

Stephen’s is just one of many Street photography auctions taking place over at the Charity Print Auction for Japan group on flickr, so be sure to check the others out, snag a nice print and donate to a worth cause.

At the time of writing, Stepehen’s book was at £125. You can bid for it here and view the rest of the images from the book in his flickr set.

When I began shooting street in 2005 I was working a corporate job in Downtown Los Angeles. I had an hour for lunch and would typically rush and grab a sandwich or burrito, inhale it as fast as I could, then spend the rest of my alloted time speed walking the streets and alleys pointing and shooting at just about every human being or group of human beings that crossed my path.

When I returned to the office my adrenaline would be pumping and embarrassingly the sweat stains would often be visible under my arm pits and in my chest region. It didn’t matter though. Riding that creative high often made the afternoons evaporate into a haze of repetitive tasks and abstract photography thought.

When the work day was over, I’d usually head right back out to the streets and take advantage of the remaining L.A. light before heading home for the day. And when I returned home those early days, more often than not, I’d look at Gus Powell’s work on iN-PUBLiC.

Long before I became a Joel Meyerowitz sycophant, Gus Powell held the throne of most admired street photographer in my hierarchy of idols, although that wasn’t something I’d often vocalize. If asked, I’d say Winogrand. That was the safe choice. People would understand that. Gus Powell though? At first glance his photographs can be underwhelming. The compositions are complex, and often require a bit longer to read than decisive moment type photographs. He’s not a flashy street photographer but more of an acquired taste. It’s the type of work you get excited to talk about when you find a fellow admirer.

I remember staring at the above photograph and marveling at the moment, the color, the line from red shirt to pink balloon to yellow cage, and the homeless man trapped in between. It seemed perfect, and bizarre, the type of random moment that made the hours of walking around with a camera worth the effort.

Naturally as time passed, and I absorbed more street photography, this photograph became less interesting, but it’ll always be one of those photographs that trigger a certain photographic memory. It was a gateway photograph that introduced me to the harder, more complicated photographs.

I remember reading about ‘The Juggler’ on 2point8. I was intrigued by the title. Sure the photograph was interesting, but why ‘The Juggler’? I started to realize something else was going on with these pictures. They were influenced not only by photography but by words and literature. I had a hunch that there was a stronger connection between my writing background and burgeoning interest in photography than I first suspected, and Powell’s ‘Lunch Pictures started to confirm this belief. Photography didn’t need to be an escape from words, rather it could work in harmony with words.

Frank O’Hara. Quotidian street photography. Lunch Pictures.

The Lunch Pictures transformed the way I thought about street photography and forced me to think about my own work in a new light. Shooting on the street had more of a purpose.  It wasn’t just about running out and making photographs. Time, place, and philosophy started to factor into the equation. I started to look at my patterns. What time of day was I driven to make photographs? What locations energized me? How did literature and cinema influence my work?

All those hours of reading Bukowski, Henry Miller, Krishnamurti, Camus & Dostoevsky became relevant to my photography and I realized many of those ideas could be applied to my random wanderings on the street.

“The pictures I made are definitely a product of the time and space that they could be made in. Someone once noted that the fixed parameters of the project were a bit like the form of a sonnet or a specific rhyme scheme. I suspect this was brought up in part because of the project’s connection to O’Hara’s Lunch Poems . . . but I do think that I made a lot of pictures that I never would have made had I had more time and space available to me.” – Gus Powell

After figuring this out my ideas about street photography and my own photography started to evolve. If I were to take it seriously, I had to create a framework and context for what I was doing. It was no longer acceptable to believe that randomly making photographs in the flow of the street was good enough. Whether I realized it or not I was making these photographs with a purpose. The challenge became to not only understand that purpose but the context in which it existed. I’m still working on this today, and as the years go by, I’m finding it to be incredibly challenging.

But I keep going back to Gus Powell and his ‘Lunch Pictures’, trying to gain another glimpse into the synergy between photography, literature, experience and time.

The following article is written by HCSP member Charlie Kirk – twocutedogs, who along with many other flickr members, is auctioning prints for the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami appeal through the CPA – Charity Print Auction – group on Flickr.

“While sat in my 16th floor office, in Akasaka Tokyo, struggling to read a very bad English translation, the building started to shake. After living in Japan for over 8 years I am not particularly bothered by earthquakes, but this one felt different, it didn’t stop. It was fierce and jolting.

Slowly you could see the tension rise in the open plan areas, people scrabbled for their hard hats, froze, or got under their tables. I froze.

The shaking continued for another 5 to 10 minutes, although I was losing all concept of time. My mind wondered to thoughts of my dogs, were they ok, how were they doing. I decided to leave. I was feeling sick by now as I walked down the emergency staircase along with Japanese salarymen and office ladies, many glued to mobile phone TVs, faces white.

When I got to my building I found the lift and upward emergency stairs were closed. I lost it. I shouted at the poor staff until they let me through. I retrieved Honey and Willy and quickly checked my cameras were safe.

I returned to my work evacuation area, with two dogs and a camera in tow, to strange looks from my co-workers. I couldn’t find my team so I just sat around, surveying the surreal. By now it was 3:30pm on Friday afternoon and the streets were packed with hard hats and worried expressions.

My cell phone didn’t work. Blackberry was down. So to discover what was happening I reverted to Facebook and Twitter. With my nearest and dearest OK I walked to a public square to watch the devastation unfold on a large TV.

With the dogs OK and my flat undamaged I decided to leave them there and head out with a camera and flash. At first I was feeling guilty about shooting but then convinced myself that I was a documentary photographer and that people would be interested to see the shots. I think I also updated HCSP around this time.

As I walked to Akasaka station life seemed relatively normal again, the side streets were reasonably quiet and there were no discernible signs of panic. It even felt quite festive at my local bar which was full of brokers that had been drinking for 3 hours, I shared a quick beer with an old schoolfriend before heading back out.

The tranquility changed when I got to Akasaka station. The trains were down and taxis were nowhere. It was rammed with people both inside and out. There were queues of people trying to hitch lifts and use the public phones.”

“I headed off to Roppongi, the supermarkets were lined with people buying water and cup noodles. Shelves rapidly emptying. There were some people about with various small battle scars.”

“Roppongi was like Akasaka, but writ large. People in the stations were just waiting, reading, sleeping. Outside people were walking somewhere, looking for emergency centres on maps, trying to get on buses or find a payphone without a queue. By this point, things were much more stressful.”

“Ginza line reopened around 9pm, so I moved to Tameeiki Sanno station before heading home to bed.”

“That was Friday. And now? Well I’m in Bangkok, glued to Twitter and the TV screen with the broadcasted scenes getting worse.

In Tokyo people are scared and don’t know what to believe. Many foreigners are leaving on advice from their embassies. Those staying have emergency bags and are tweeting about how to get toilet paper.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) have not handled the situation as well as it could.

In Sendai and its environs the devastation is there for all to see. Just switch on CNN. People are being washed up, towns are flattened, survivors are getting cold at night and their food stocks are running very low.

This is the country that I have lived in for some time now, and the stoic way the Japanese are coping is simultaneously inspirational and heart-wrenching. The way I see it, this is a humanitarian disaster that calls for a humanitarian response. Sure Japan is a rich country, but she is a generous and significant donor to UN causes and absolutely devastated right now. The country was perilously close to recession even before last Friday and the cost of the clean up is estimated by Singapore’s DBS bank at 100billion US dollars.

For these reasons I have decided to try to help promote the CPA – Charity Print Auction – group on Flickr.
I implore others to make donations, promote this group, submit your best shots and buy from others.”

Our thoughts go out to those affected by this disaster.

You can find two of Charlie’s images along with those of a few other HCSP members in the CPA group on flickr.

©Joel Meyerowitz

I’ve been planning this post for about week and the core of it was about how I desperately want to see more of Meyerowitz’s early street work. Then today, The Guardian ran a selection from his show at Format which featured a few photographs I’d never seen before. I was excited and a bit disturbed by the irony but knew it wouldn’t deter me from continuing with this post because I’m determined to uncover his stash of early street work.

©Joel Meyerowitz

When I first started shooting street, I was directed to the normal big names, HCB, Winogrand, Frank, Friedlander, Doisneau, Levitt, etc. Each were big influences but when I was later directed to Meyerowitz’s work something resonated with me strongly.  I only saw a few images at first, probably in Bystander but then a selection of his work was added to iN-PUBLIC and I was hooked.  The photograph below literally changed how I thought about street photography.

©Joel Meyerowitz

I couldn’t figure it out at first but the longer it held my gaze the more I was transfixed by the pieces of the puzzle.  The first piece my eye fixated on is the man in the center looking dead at you while holding the woman’s arm while she’s looking down the alley. It’s the type of moment that probably didn’t amount to much in real time but when frozen by the camera it reveals a tension and ambiguity that transforms it into something interesting.

But that’s not it. When you scan the image from left to right, the man on the left edge adds another element. Falling out of the frame, his slight glance at the man and woman adds another dynamic to the composition. As you continue you notice the people walking away down the alley which connects to the woman looking away. Are she and the man following them?  Then you get to the red car which might be distracting except the color works perfectly with the yellows, oranges and blues of the women and man on the far left.  As you gaze up, the city landscape, shapes and soft light compliment the human scene below.  And then, on the far right you have the man in the shadow, a mystery that holds the frame together.

Ok, so that’s the long version, but the short version is that it feels exactly like one of those bustling moments where nothing is really happening until the camera captures that exact moment.  That’s probably the most important lesson that I picked up from this frame. On the street, the photographer can create small dramas and mysteries out of the most mundane of movements and gestures.  The part of the frame I can never get over is the man’s hand holding the women as she turns away. It’s that subtle turn, her hair swinging, that creates such a dynamic image. In the next second they’re walking down the alley arm in arm off to their car or dinner reservation.

©Joel Meyerowitz

Meyerowitz does this time and again in his street work. He forces you to put the pieces of the puzzle together and understands how the movement of the people, the color and shapes all work in harmony to complete the frame.  The photograph is about the entire frame and within it there maybe a human drama, or several small gestures that add up to create something new and revealing.

©Joel Meyerowitz

Something I appreciate about his frames is how he provides just enough detail of the physical structures in the background to add detail and depth to the photograph. Winogrand’s camera would typical  be drawn like a magnet to the human element, whereas Meyerowitz would always allow some room for it to breath within the frame. Those small details and the typically brilliant use of color add a level of complexity to the frame that I find interesting and engaging.

©Joel Meyerowitz

©Joel Meyerowitz

But he’s not always so subtle. There are times where a character or situation are so unique or strange that he simply puts the frame where it needs to be in order to show you.  He knows when not to complicate the frame, and I think this is a true sign of a master street photographer.

©Joel Meyerowitz

©Joel Meyerowitz

Same gold wall?

©Joel Meyerowitz

©Joel Meyerowitz

This is incredibly cliche to say but when I look at Meyerowitz’s street work I immediately want to go out and shoot. Whenever I’m bored with street, I always check out his gallery on iN-PUBLIC. But then I get disappointed because it’s over too early.  I say to myself, “I know there’s more! And he’s keeping it from me! Why Joel? Why?”

You can see plenty of Winogrand’s street work in his books but there’s no book that contains only Meyerowitz’s street work, at least not to my knowledge.  And on the web there’s not much beyond what you can find on iN-PUBLIC.

I imagine what’s sitting in those archives and I want to see more. I understand the value of editing and only showing the best work, but on the other hand, with street photography, especially when created by a master, I think you can show more these days without having an negative impact on your reputation.

So Joel, if you’re reading this please create a Tumblr or a blog dedicated to your street work. Within a week I guarantee you’ll have more traffic than you could ever imagine, enough to demonstrate that you could publish a book of this work and sell enough copies to make it worth the trouble.

And if you want someone to go through those archives and help figure out what should go on the blog, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Now it’s time to go back and take a stroll through that iN-PUBLIC gallery one more time.

Nice find from Blake Andrews and Matt Stuart. You can download Bialer’s book on Lulu, or purchase the hardcover.

mattbialer.com

Photographs ©Matt Bialer