Point of reference: East 100th Street
Ok, let’s start this blog entry with a cheap joke… CNN’s headline news yesterday was ‘Paris Liberated’, when I saw this, I thought that happened in 1944 when the Allied Forces kicked out the Germans, why do they report about it today? :-)
Turning to more serious matters, I have booked my ticket for my first trip (of a few over the summer) to Kiev today. In a bit more than a week I will fly to Kiev to start my major project. Just to recap: I intend to create a portrait of daily life around the Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). The square will serve as the geographic boundary for my project and as a metaphor for the different strata of the Ukrainian society, which all at the same time coalesce and clash in this square.
So it will become serious and tangible now… Scary thought somehow. Previously when I went to Kiev (in total about 11 times), I went there on business and photography was a by-product somehow: dear to me and close to my heart but not the main purpose of the trip. I would sneak out with my camera at night or between business meetings and try to capture a few interesting shots. I was disappointed when I did not manage to come back with a few good shots and I would go to bed elated when I had created a few images that I liked. But it was not the main purpose of going to the Ukraine. Now photography becomes centre-stage… and it will be for my final project for my MA… as I said, a somewhat scary thought…
In term of visual style, my role models will be Jonas Bendiksen’s Satellites or Luc Dalahaye’s Winterreise. In terms of approach and subject matter, probably Bruce Davidson’s ‘East 100th Street’ comes very close as a point of reference. Bruce Davidson spent about two years documenting and photographing a single street in New York in the late 1960s (most of the images are on the Magnum website). The book is a seminal in several aspects, if only for the reason to show that you can produce interesting photography in your backyard.
I spent a whole afternoon yesterday studying this body of work. Obviously, what transpires in these photographs is that he empathises with his subjects a lot and is very familiar with the context, i.e knows what it means to live in the dire living conditions at East 100th Street in the late 60s. Davidson managed to create arresting portraits of the residents of this street outdoors and in their homes. Many of the residents let him into their lives and photograph them in their personal space at home. I also noticed that most of the photographs are not ‘traditional’ (if I can term it that way) street photographs, i.e. ‘stolen moments’ of subjects completely unaware of their picture being taken.
While probably not asking his subjects to formally pose for him, Davidson takes a different approach. Most of the residents are well aware when Davidson takes the picture: there is often direct eye contact or a direct look into the camera. The book is also dominated by portraits of the residents, some more formal than others, but there is often a certain response to Davidson in the images. This also suggests to me that there is a certain self-reference in these images since at some level, the subjects respond to Davidson’s presence and in this way, there is something of him in these images as well. All of the images show, however, how comfortable the residents were at Davidson’s presence and that of his camera.
When I took images previously in Kiev, I tried to blend in and take pictures with my subjects being unaware of their picture being taken, somehow hoping to capture more of an ‘unposed’ and ‘authentic’ moment. After having studied Bruce Davidson’s book, I am not so sure anymore whether this is the right approach for my project. Maybe I should get more involved with the ‘inhabitants’ of the Independence Square this time, maybe even attempt to photograph them at home and explore their living conditions away from the square? Food for thought…
Turning to more serious matters, I have booked my ticket for my first trip (of a few over the summer) to Kiev today. In a bit more than a week I will fly to Kiev to start my major project. Just to recap: I intend to create a portrait of daily life around the Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). The square will serve as the geographic boundary for my project and as a metaphor for the different strata of the Ukrainian society, which all at the same time coalesce and clash in this square.
So it will become serious and tangible now… Scary thought somehow. Previously when I went to Kiev (in total about 11 times), I went there on business and photography was a by-product somehow: dear to me and close to my heart but not the main purpose of the trip. I would sneak out with my camera at night or between business meetings and try to capture a few interesting shots. I was disappointed when I did not manage to come back with a few good shots and I would go to bed elated when I had created a few images that I liked. But it was not the main purpose of going to the Ukraine. Now photography becomes centre-stage… and it will be for my final project for my MA… as I said, a somewhat scary thought…
In term of visual style, my role models will be Jonas Bendiksen’s Satellites or Luc Dalahaye’s Winterreise. In terms of approach and subject matter, probably Bruce Davidson’s ‘East 100th Street’ comes very close as a point of reference. Bruce Davidson spent about two years documenting and photographing a single street in New York in the late 1960s (most of the images are on the Magnum website). The book is a seminal in several aspects, if only for the reason to show that you can produce interesting photography in your backyard.
I spent a whole afternoon yesterday studying this body of work. Obviously, what transpires in these photographs is that he empathises with his subjects a lot and is very familiar with the context, i.e knows what it means to live in the dire living conditions at East 100th Street in the late 60s. Davidson managed to create arresting portraits of the residents of this street outdoors and in their homes. Many of the residents let him into their lives and photograph them in their personal space at home. I also noticed that most of the photographs are not ‘traditional’ (if I can term it that way) street photographs, i.e. ‘stolen moments’ of subjects completely unaware of their picture being taken.
While probably not asking his subjects to formally pose for him, Davidson takes a different approach. Most of the residents are well aware when Davidson takes the picture: there is often direct eye contact or a direct look into the camera. The book is also dominated by portraits of the residents, some more formal than others, but there is often a certain response to Davidson in the images. This also suggests to me that there is a certain self-reference in these images since at some level, the subjects respond to Davidson’s presence and in this way, there is something of him in these images as well. All of the images show, however, how comfortable the residents were at Davidson’s presence and that of his camera.
When I took images previously in Kiev, I tried to blend in and take pictures with my subjects being unaware of their picture being taken, somehow hoping to capture more of an ‘unposed’ and ‘authentic’ moment. After having studied Bruce Davidson’s book, I am not so sure anymore whether this is the right approach for my project. Maybe I should get more involved with the ‘inhabitants’ of the Independence Square this time, maybe even attempt to photograph them at home and explore their living conditions away from the square? Food for thought…
posted by rupert beagle at 12:06 pm
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