the strange and unfamiliar - Part 1

What is Strangeness? A sense of otherness. The opposite of common, ordinary, familiar. Strangeness comes out of capturing human beings and the world in a different, unfamiliar light. In this article, I wanted to explore different ways I have evoked a sense of strangeness and otherness in my photography - and through this, introduce possible avenues for you to explore. I hope you will enjoy this reading, and if so, let me know in the comments!

While there are many ways to think of the strange and unfamiliar, in my next series of articles I will discuss five themes that are close to my heart:

1. Transforming the relationship between man and the city

2. Introducing shadows as a destabilizing element

3. Connecting elements to create tension and parallels

4. Windows to create distance and a sense of otherness

5. Using reflections to fully transform the reality

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1. Transforming the relationship between man and the city

The human-city relationship is an important theme in my photography and can generate a variety of emotions and feelings, depending on the situation. In some instances, transforming this relationship can lead to not regonising the world around us - and creates a sense of unfamiliarity, of otherness and inherent tension. There is the tale of the overshadowing city, making us feel small and almost negligeable in the middle of it. Combined with lower or higher angles, the story and main feelings conveyed can change, from isolation in the middle of the city, to abstraction of the sense of humanity in it. Transforming the background can create completely new and strange stories, with people erupting simingly from nowhere, or from a world different than ours. And at times, city and human elements blend so much with one another that we cannot recognise where one starts, and the other ends - all of these creating situations that are strange and unfamiliar, from slightly disturbing to fully surrealist. A world that we can barely recognise - echoing the familiar while shifting in shape and in meaning.

1.1. In this first photograph, the subject is highly minimised compared to the city heights. The large negative space created by the shadows around her is equally disturbing - it seems to reshape the space around her and create an unfamiliar, overpowering urban setting. There is a sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity in these transformed surroundings, as if we cannot recognise the city itself. As if the city was slowly closing down on our subject, threatening to remove any remaining light.

1.2 In this second photograph, the subject is shot from behind, creating a sense of distance, while his dog is facing in the other direction - as if looking wearily at its surroundings. In addition, the low angle shows them as very small compared to the mega towers in the background, creating a stronger sense of isolation within the city. The scene and angle shows an unfamiliar face of the city, while the subject remains a mystery to us, reinforcing a sense of otherness, of distance and unfamiliarity - perhaps even of threat.

1.3. I talked about this photograph before, but it felt very suiting in the context of creating strangeness. Here, at first sight, we may simply be observing the outside of a staircase, with someone exiting at the bottom. A deeper look though allows us to discover another head above, yet we are never quite sure what is human, and what is part of the staircase. There is a sense of strangeness emanating from blurring the lines between human and non-human, disturbing the normal relationship between humans and the city - which should clearly outline where one begins, and one ends.

1.4 The man in this photograph is shot from the waist, within a very strong light. Adding black and white constrasts, and we simply cannot recognise the background. Not only is he interesting and standing out as a subject, but he seems to emerge from the clouds at first sight. And indeed, light and angle can be highly transformative of the city background, up to creating a completely illusionary tale, a strange portrait of a strange man, emerging from a place we simply cannot recognise.

1.5 For this last image we shift to a different angle, this time looking from above the subject, and through what appears to be a fence. The man, there again, is highly minimised vs. the bigger city, which is an unfamiliar sight. Additionally, the lines created by the fence only reveals a partial look at the city, framing the man in a very narrow window. These lines prevent us from seeing the bigger picture, emprisoning the subject and the city in narrow frames that are coming and going from nowhere. This framing is what creates a sense of strangeness in this image that nearly appears flat, two-dimensional, distorting reality.

1.6 And finally, in this image, the role of light is powerful and transformative. We can see a woman looking sideways, her face half hidden in the shadow, with a background suddenly feeling disconnected from her. Because of the light and the strong shadows, the common London bus in the background seems to emerge from the dark, unreal and unpalpable, while our subject stands in the foreground with no apparent connection with the city behind her. This disconnect creates a very strange and unfamiliar scene, as if we were looking at two different images merging together in a surreal painting.

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Thanks for reading, and look out for Part 2 of this series: “Introducing shadows as a destabilizing element”, coming up soon.

Have a lovely day!

A frame to define Street Photography

I was recently pulled into a discussion on Facebook Messenger about what is and what is not street photography, initiated by the Street Photography Club. And I was confronted with many pictures that felt, well, not to belong to the street photography genre. 

So why does it matter, will you ask? Isn’t art in the eyes of the beholder at the end of the day? Should we feel free to express our creativity and name it however we want?

Possibly, yes. Our world is changing, evolving at every turn. It’s easy to end up saying: street photography is whatever you want it to be. In fact, anything less is probably rude and narrow minded. This is a far cry from the state of affairs when I first joined street photography groups in 2013 / 2014. In that time, street photography was defined very narrowly, led by a small group of male street photographers who wanted to set incredibly narrow guidelines - either you shot like the masters, or you could forget about it. 

So the world is changing - street photography has reached the masses, and everyone, anyone, can define street photography the way they want nowadays.

But here is the thing. For any group to identify themselves as street photographers, there must be a common definition and a common aspiration to bring us together. This common frame and understanding must be loose enough to incorporate a multitude of visions and allow us to innovate within the genre. But it must be there - as without a frame, we are a group with very little to share.

Which brings us to wonder: what is street photography? And what is not street photography?

To me, street photography is all about capturing the decisive moment - it is candid in essence, is shot in a public environment, and has people as its main subject. But really, it sounds like a set of rules with no proper reasons for it, so I will try harder. 

First of all, Street photography differs from documentary photography in its intent - the goal of documentary photography is to document the social and human condition. It focuses on real people, with real stories. It can be candid, but it doesn’t have to. On the other hand, street photography must be candid. It can be about documenting life around us, but must be understood on its own, without subtext. Its purpose can also be to create artistic pictures removed from the necessity to document the real - and being, instead, a vehicle to share a visual or emotional story that each viewer can interpret differently.

For example - the image above was captured during a dance class in Shoreditch. It could be part of a broader documentary project, about Shoredict life or about a children dance class. Yet as a single image, it speaks by itself - it needs no title, no caption, no location. In the absence of a bigger project, this image is to me street photography. I don’t care who this little girl really was, and whether she was, in fact, in a dance class or not. I leave that open to your imagination…while the window acts as a frame to remind you that I have captured a secret moment, from a totally outsider point of view, creating distance with my subject.

Secondly, street photography belongs to the public sphere, crafted by random encounters of people you will never meet. Street photography is all about serendipity. And in this sense, it cannot really happen within the private space, where images often become personal, intimate - images of people with real stories attached to the place, and of people you have a connection with. Because street photography aspires to give the illusion of random encounters, the context in your image will be important. An urban or outside context will differentiate your shot from a personal portrait or a documentary / reportage series. It will create that necessary distance between you and your subject to create that illusion of serendipity, of randomness of elements, of “decisive moment” ultimately. 

The image above with two little girls could be ambiguous. I am close enough to them to suggest that I may know them, and that this is a personal story of two real-life children. But the context in the picture - the shadows, the door on the right - is enough to cast some doubt - could it be a random encounter? Can they just happen to turn around, at the moment the picture was taken? Who are they really? And does the photographer know them, or do they just ‘happen’ to be there on a sunny day?

And finally, to make it possible, it needs to be candid. But the definition of candid doesn’t mean that the photographer must always remain invisible. Many shots show subjects at the moment of awareness, looking straight into the camera, and reacting on the spot. These types of images can be very powerful in establishing a connection between elements and the viewer, yet they shouldn’t appear to be posed or staged - they must still capture a candid moment in time, with a stranger whom you will never meet.

In this final image, one of so many I take, you can definitely see a connection established through the eye of the subject. My subject has seen me - she’s on the line of awareness, not staging or posing, but becoming aware of the camera facing her. Yet the shot is dynamic - there is no stopping for her, she keeps moving. And she doesn’t smile at me - she doesn’t acknowledge the picture and the scene. She belongs to a moment in time, on the edge of awareness, on the edge of posing, and yet forever caught in candidness.

Now, that is my definition of street photography. What is yours?

New ebook: An Exploration of Creativity

Hi everyone. I am very happy to announce that after a whole year working on this project, I have finally published my second ebook: An Exploration of Creativity - through the lens of 8 contemporary street photographers.

Street photography is an incredible challenge to our creative selves. And that's what makes it so interesting, so addictive in essence. With this book, I wanted to discover how creativity worked, and how, eventually, we come to build a strong personal vision. Using the insights and perspectives from 8 street photographers that I admire a lot, I have compiled our collective thinking on creativity and vision. I very much hope that you will find there something inspiring to keep you going with your art.

And in the meantime, I wish you a fantastic journey.

The ebook is available as a free PDF here, and also available on Issuu.

Part 4 | Building a vision: An ongoing revolution

“An artist has a voice, but it’s constantly evolving, it’s a process in the making. It’s always too early to know who we are as an artist. Creativity is not predictability… It’s really the opposite.”

Rohit Vohra

The constancy of change

For human beings, life means change. The constancy of change in an artists’ life is perhaps the only certainty that we are allowed to have. The street photographers interviewed for this project all agree on this: our art is changing, just as we are. It’s a continuous revolution for the artist.

Mike Lee summarizes this process of change this way: “To be brief, I am instinctive. I may often not get it right, but this is part of the learning process. What I saw three years ago, for example, isn’t what I am looking for now, and that — of course — will change in time. I also find images taken over the last past years that now fit with my current vision & narrative.”

Image by Mike Lee

Letting the door open to change

For some photographers, like Melissa Breyer, their vision has slowly refined over time, but change is always welcome:

“I don’t think I ever stop feeling creative, but I sometimes feel like I want to break out of certain themes I’ve been exploring for fear of becoming formulaic. But finding new ways of seeing is such an organic process; it can’t be forced. I am patient with myself and trust that I will fall into the themes that are natural for my progression. Every little step I take might be creative, but the path is winding and passive. Sometimes I’ll go for very long walks and not take a shot, and that’s fine because the experience was no less meaningful.  I am quite content of where I am today, but I am always hoping for something new – a small change – that will keep me curious and interested.”

Image by Melissa Breyer

Image by Rohit Vohra

Embracing challenge as a way of life

Earlier in his life, Rohit Vohra was shooting everything. Now he’s thinking about what’s next: “Can I do something differently?” He looks for joy, as he is not self-motivated. He needs to challenge himself by setting new constraints to his creativity. “I don’t like being predictable and I don’t want to be a slave to a style. I like doing new things and experiment a lot, these days I am shooting a lot with flash. It’s an ongoing process... The experience is always unique. Despite working from one style to another, I believe I am able to see unicity in my work, though this is not what I am trying to achieve.”

Image by Rohit Vohra

Restoring our lost creativity

Rohit Vohra further reveals his own tactics to find inspiration and overcome any creativity blocks: “I read a lot, not just photo books, or essays. I read anything and everything. I am always asking myself questions, this really helps in creating mind maps and that often leads to new ideas and creativity. Yes, we all stop feeling creative at some point especially if one has been shooting for long. Different things work for different people. What works for me is taking a break, travelling, reading a nice book, or going out to shoot without a camera. Shooting without the camera enables us to see more and it’s a great exercise for the brain. One doesn’t feel the pressure of taking pictures when you step out without the camera. Sometimes a movie, a song or just great design will inspire you.”

Image by Rohit Vohra

Expanding one’s creative horizon

Arek Rataj and Martin U. Waltz have shared their interest in exploring new photography genres, beyond pure street photography. In Arek’s words: “There’s only so much that I can achieve through opportunistic and situational photography. The reality is that I am interested in capturing bigger stories, that are documentary in essence, and that I can orchestrate from start to finish.” For Martin, street photography has clear limitations. It is too reliant on chance, and there’s no certainty of output. “You need to want to love the process more than the result…” He’s currently interested in exploring urban and people photography with more staging and control, as well as documenting big stories but with a street photography vision, raw and authentic. Finally, Rammy Narula has started a new project: it’s no longer about people and places, and it’s all about light and creation of shapes and patterns through light. This is clearly a new direction for Rammy, putting human beings as secondary subjects.

Image by Rammy Narula

Case study: Nima Taradji

Nima Taradji used to be a talented street photographer. But his evolution as a photographer took him beyond the narrow sphere of street photography to focus on intentional storytelling: the major difference, according to him, between pure street and documentary photography. For Nima, street is more of a tactic than a genre itself, and he uses his street photography skills to capture the real people and communities making up our world, especially those at risk of being forgotten. When looking at Nima’s street photography and documentary work, we recognize the same themes and patterns repeating themselves across genres (e.g., focus on hands to express individuality). And yet, his projects – whether political, social or cultural – are as different from one another as the people making them. The people themselves determine the visual feel and style of the series, as does Nima’s point of view, subtly overlaid onto the 15-20 frames that will become his final story.

Conclusion

• Photographers and artists experience constant change, giving birth to new artistic directions throughout their life. Their vision and voice change as well with time.
• Some photographers have narrowed down their vision enough to be content where they are, while others thrive on new sources of challenges or new projects to pursue
• Finding ongoing inspiration sometimes requires to take a beginner’s mind, looking at the world as if we were seeing for the very first time through reading books or practicing photography without a camera for example
• Some photographers are also looking beyond pure street photography for their next challenge, looking to explore new visual genres such as documentary photography
• Change is to be embraced, not feared. It’s always too soon to determine who we are as an artist. Creativity is the contrary of predictability.

Image by Nima Taradji

Part 3 | Building a vision: The power of narratives

Narrative in street photography: revealing a paradox

By its own spontaneous and candid nature, street photography doesn’t often lend itself to the creation of intentional narratives. Why? Because narratives assume that several photographs make sense together to tell a particular story, evoke particular feelings, build upon common themes. But if each shot is an unique as our vision of the world in this moment, can narratives ever exist in street photography? Can the lack of planning and premeditation be somewhat overcome to create a piece of work that tells something bigger than each shot on its own?

Rohit Vohra shares: “I rarely take photographs with a series in mind. Sometimes a strong photograph will lead to an idea and that idea will stay in the subconscious mind, patterns emerge and you soon know there is a potential of a series. Most of my series have started with a few existing photographs or at least one strong photograph, but I have never consciously looked for the next shot. It’s only while I am taking a shot, or a little after it that I might feel it fits well in an existing series.”

Image by Rohit Vohra

The role of narratives in sharing with the world

Yet, most often than not, published artists and photographers have been able to present their work with a specific angle and narrative, a way to create sense out of an accumulation of images, whether in the context of an exhibition, a publication in a magazine, or the creation of a photobook. Photographers, this is a fact, do not randomly display their images. They think through them carefully, and organize them in ways that create meaning and communicate something unique about their work.

Melissa Breyer shares: “To get published, it’s important to think through narratives and series. Telling the specifics of one’s work is an essential factor in getting seen.”  While she considers most of her work to be an ongoing series, she now enjoys smaller bodies of work. From a street perspective, she’s quite content with where she is. Yet she’s always hoping that there will be something new, a small change that will keep her curious and interested in street photography. Some idea that will flourish and become a whole narrative on their own.

Image by Melissa Breyer

Narratives can be told at portfolio-level, expressing the intent behind an entire body of work, or may be expressed through smaller bodies of work: a defined set of images working together as a series or the output from a project for example.

On the creation of a portfolio

Building a portfolio requires to select images that provide a consistent view of the work. For a portfolio to be remembered, there must be strong unicity in the work being showcased, unicity in places, time, styles, moods or subjects / situations.

Martin U. Waltz has the ambition to move beyond single images to create a narrative more specific to his work – with consistency in places, subjects, location. This is why on his website, he removed all photos not taken in Berlin. Indeed, after showcasing images from all locations for a while, he realized that his travel photographs could never really expressed the same raw feeling that he tries to convey through his work. But Martin doesn’t stop there: he continuously pays attention to the recurrent elements in his photography to refine his style and unique vision – e.g., repetition in moods and situations, and eventually create a “unique narrative between myself and my work”.

Image by Martin U. Waltz

In photography, Mike Lee believes that you need a style or narrative to go with your own work. Photographers need to define what street photography means to them if they ever wish to create interesting work and get published. A few years ago, Mike published Invisible Mirrors with Corridor Elephant editions. Packaging his images into a narrative was an integral part of the editing process. He asked himself what his best pieces were, then what narrative or thread was connecting each of these images. For him, unicity in his work is more easily achieved because of the short window of time and place that he allows himself to shoot: 8-10am on his way to work. Once Mike had to choose 200 pictures based on his PhotoVogue portfolio – curated by a PhotoVogue editor: “Whether we agree with the curator or not, an external eye can make us see patterns in our work that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. This helped me improve my editing skills to be published / accepted.”

Image by Mike Lee

Intentional series in street photography

CASE STUDY: MELISSA BREYER

Steam Systems

“I think of my whole body of work as one on-going series. Part of that is because I don’t have the chance to photograph outside of NYC very often which defines a theme already, but also because I have narrowed down my style to a pretty streamlined version of what I want to document and express. Within that, more specific themes may emerge as a series. I am definitely drawn to certain themes, and if I find myself collecting a number of photos that I like that share commonalities – and I feel that they have stories to tell as a collection – then I start looking for more with the idea of grouping them together.”

Image by Melissa Breyer

CASE STUDY: MARTIN U. WALTZ

New Year’s Eve, Backstage

“Themes are preferred subjects, stuff I just care about, lenses through which I see the world. They are created at posteriori through looking at patterns across my work. Unlike themes, my series are quite intentional, but are not always thought conceptually. They are built on unicity in places and moods, and are more documentary than the rest of my work. Eventually, I am inspired by the flow, by the moment. Series will always be an evolving dialogue created from the raw material, not the other way around.”

Image by Martin U. Waltz

Conclusion

• Narratives are what connect images across our work: a way to provide meaning beyond any single image, and to be remembered among many photographers and artists
• Street photography, by its candid and spontaneous nature, makes it harder to articulate intentional narratives – yet published authors have not chosen their images randomly.
• We can tell narratives in various ways: broadly, through showcasing a portfolio, or through narrow bodies of work – either themes, series or projects
• Unicity in places, time, situations, moods or subject matters provide the foundation for presenting images in a meaningful way.
• Eventually, to prevent against becoming formulaic, many street photographers create series organically, through a combination of intention and improvisation.

Image by Nima Taradji