Продолжение
As it is often the case with street photography (and my project is essentially a street photography project if you strip it down to the core), you spend hours, days or (heaven forbid) weeks and nothing happens or you just don’t see an image worth being taken…The trick is probably not getting discouraged and accepting these ‘dry’ periods as part of the process… - as difficult as it may be. After all, as Cartier-Bresson put it ’…It is the photo that takes you; one must not take photos.’ In other words, if you try to force it, you take (at best) mediocre but often just plain dreadful pictures…
Yesterday was just such a day, nothing really happened in these underpasses, or I just did not see it, or I was not at the right place at the right moment, or, or… Despite having hung around there for hours and hours... It is very difficult not to get discouraged in these moments. The feeling creeps up that you might have seen it all, that’s it, no more images to take, you have ‘exhausted’ the place, the project maybe…
And just as I wanted to give up for the day, the perfect ‘theatre’ presented itself to me. I saw this old woman begging in front of an entrance and I sensed that this could become an image with meaning if I waited for the right ‘actors’ to appear on stage and give this begging some context. After numerous attempts and at least half an hour working on this situation, I took this picture:
two well-heeled good-looking youngsters in designer clothes hurling by this old and frail beggar. This image represents a lot of what is going on in these underpasses as a metaphor of what is going on in the Ukraine as a whole today. There are the ones benefiting from the double digit GDP growth in the current year, and there are those who might even be worse off than before the Orange Revolution, those who have to beg in their old age and in poor health in these underpasses…
And sometimes it needs a bit of encouragement like this to persuade other images to come and find you… This image, which I took a few hours afterwards combines two pertinent leitmotifs in these underpasses: music and flowers. And again, this underpass underneath Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the main square in Kiev is but a mere metaphor, a microcosm for the Ukraine. Music and flowers have a significant place in the Ukrainian society.
Stylistically I am trying to move away from the reflections and mirror images that I took few weeks ago (I will still keep them and use them for the final edit, I hope) and experiment with longer exposure times and blurring…Looking at Paolo Pellegrin’s work is always inspiring and instructive in this respect. The Magnum website has a preview of Paolo Pellegrin’s excellent new book ‘Double Blind’ which will be published by Trolley soon.
Yesterday was just such a day, nothing really happened in these underpasses, or I just did not see it, or I was not at the right place at the right moment, or, or… Despite having hung around there for hours and hours... It is very difficult not to get discouraged in these moments. The feeling creeps up that you might have seen it all, that’s it, no more images to take, you have ‘exhausted’ the place, the project maybe…
And just as I wanted to give up for the day, the perfect ‘theatre’ presented itself to me. I saw this old woman begging in front of an entrance and I sensed that this could become an image with meaning if I waited for the right ‘actors’ to appear on stage and give this begging some context. After numerous attempts and at least half an hour working on this situation, I took this picture:
two well-heeled good-looking youngsters in designer clothes hurling by this old and frail beggar. This image represents a lot of what is going on in these underpasses as a metaphor of what is going on in the Ukraine as a whole today. There are the ones benefiting from the double digit GDP growth in the current year, and there are those who might even be worse off than before the Orange Revolution, those who have to beg in their old age and in poor health in these underpasses…
And sometimes it needs a bit of encouragement like this to persuade other images to come and find you… This image, which I took a few hours afterwards combines two pertinent leitmotifs in these underpasses: music and flowers. And again, this underpass underneath Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the main square in Kiev is but a mere metaphor, a microcosm for the Ukraine. Music and flowers have a significant place in the Ukrainian society.
Stylistically I am trying to move away from the reflections and mirror images that I took few weeks ago (I will still keep them and use them for the final edit, I hope) and experiment with longer exposure times and blurring…Looking at Paolo Pellegrin’s work is always inspiring and instructive in this respect. The Magnum website has a preview of Paolo Pellegrin’s excellent new book ‘Double Blind’ which will be published by Trolley soon.
posted by rupert beagle at 8:58 am
3 Comments:
here is something I have wanted to know since i started following your blog. its a practical question: how do you take the pictures? i mean, do you hang around the beggars and flower salespeople and just shoot the pictures? up front? from the hip? from far away zooming in order not to be caught? do you ask permission before? if so, how do you get your point across? do you explain the goal of your pictures (if you are already in a position to express it) to your actors? do they get it? whats your understanding on how they feel about it? and if you do explain to everyone on the pictures the messages and implications you are trying to document with your project, when do you find time to sleep?
I understood the working with reflections, because I think that somewhat gets the photographer around this problem.
This is probably basic footwork for the documentary photographer. As a sparetime fan of photography, i was never able to answer those questions.
when I look at the picture with the 2 well off youngsters and the old beggar lady, I really want to know: Did she know you were taking her picture? What did you say? How did she feel about it?
I work mostly with a wide angle 28mm lens and a rangefinder, so I have to be close and quick (and have to focus manually, i.e. shooting from the hip does not work, also due to the low light conditions, hyperfocal does not work either, the range would be too small with an open aperture) to take a photograph. What you don’t see in the postings are the many, many images that I missed and the many, many times these people have objected me taking pictures (especially the older people in these underpasses are extremely shy and exert a Soviet style mistrust against anyone with a camera, let alone a foreigner). I usually don’t ask for permission but if someone objects me taking his/her image, I stop... mutter an apology and walk on. Sometimes by just hanging around for a long, long time, people start to ignore you (as in the case of the old beggar) and then you can often take the best (unposed) images. Maybe I will write a blog soon about the frustrations when people refuse having their picture taken (especially when I think it would be visually interesting and would add to the story)…. And maybe I will be even so bold to show some of the images where I missed it… But can’t tell you how many times I walked away there, being entirely unhappy and frustrated of what I have produced… But thanks for being such an engaging reader of my blog.
hm never thought of that. When I was taking pictures, a lot of times I just missed the moment where the situation was what I wanted to capture. You get the camera up, the 'subject' notices you and the moment's gone. I never thought about (nor calculated having the time for) hanging around until people forget about you again and that the moment could return.
so, as much as I am enjoying the pictures themselves that you are posting (and I was very happy about the post where you decided to publish work in progress as you go along) I am looking forward to descriptions of the picture taking process itself where you see fit.
thanks for your blogging :-)
ps: I have never been to kiev so i have no idea what those underpasses are like. but I am wondering, how long it will take you to hang around there until you become a part of that microcosm ?
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