Well okay, these words and photos are a little more than just a walk. This is another street photography diary. Actually, unless you count Just Looking this is only my second and a walk that started just like the first. After paying my respects for the victims of The Triangle Factory Fire on the ninety-ninth anniversary of the tragedy I took about six months to write Friday Evening Photo Blogging: Street Photography Edition.
I must be improving because this Village view only took a few day after attending the Memorial for the Triangle Factory Fire Victims. Of course it is not my Village, I live about fifteen miles north in NoMa. Aren't real estate agents a hoot? Here's some more misleading. Is this Manhattan or Mykonos?
Just like this is not really my Village, that photo is not really street photography. Since street photography is about holding up a mirror to society and providing a detailed record of street culture, you almost need a person in the photo. Perhaps that photo is just an architectural record of a Manhattan oddity but I try.
All in all, I think this diary represents my best catch for just one day of photography and that is because the Village is so photogenic. Below I offer a Sunday walk in Greenwich Village and SoHo, needless to say, sneaks in there too.
"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."
-Walker Evans
I'm going to get technical here and actually attempt to communicate some thoughts about the urban photograph but first a little neighborhood identity. Starting with a happy mixture of colors in a metropolis known for shades of gray. Have your coffee and pastry in style, SoHo style.
SoHo, the once trendy playground for the rich that descended to "Hell's Hundred Acres" and came back again as the rich followed the artist who were seeking cheap rent. Now the neighborhood has become multi million dollar lofts in the cast iron facades that made SoHo famous and high priced shopping on the ground floors, back to busy and trendy streets. Check out those beautiful blue jeans iron columns.
Greenwich Village, the Anglicized from of the Dutch name Groenwijck, meaning "Green District" has a personality that seems very different from the rest of New York City. In "The Village" that was once the suburbs of New Amsterdam so much history can be found on inviting and quiet winding streets that date back long before the Manhattan street grid above Fourteenth Street. I only got one example of that view on Sunday.
But here is a "Friendly View" that might give you Déjà Vu. Well perhaps not, I wouldn't have known myself but as I was snapping photos there was a tour guide explaining that the restaurant in the background was the setting for "Central Perks" and the building above was where the cast of Friends supposedly lived. How's that for history?
Wait, stop, what are friends for? I need to do some whining and complaining. This diary is suppose to be about street photography. What is Street Photography? I tired to answer that question in my first street photography diary and concluded, that at least for me, it is more about following in the footsteps of the great photographers who created a liberal art that represents social photojournalism. I also claimed that after that I was going to go out and do something original. Sunday was the day I was going to find my street photographer instinct and I still don't know what I'm doing or trying to say.
So I just copied others as I was walking about waiting for some Muse to breath on me and looked for some sort of statement. Turns out that originality part is not as easy as it sounds.
Here's are some typical tourist photos from a famous triangle in the West Village. I'm getting some of the technical down, got the buildings to stand up straight and perhaps the bottom photo is a subtle reminder of Robert Doisneau.
I should probably explain how street photography really began for me. I'm not really a street photographer, more like a park photographer. Following in the footsteps of so many greats is there even any social statement left for me to make? Looking at shadows and enjoying some whimsical colors of the city is a start. Composition skills are technical and improve with experience but is it art and why do you need people to make a social statement?
I do like to record architecture and with New York being as crowded as it is, I find a few pedestrian free photos of some Greenwich Village oddity to be thrilling.
Outside of the identity of yellow cabs, standard or Studebaker, automobiles are another challenge. Even though cars are everywhere, the best transit system in the nation makes car and trucks seem out of place in NYC photographs. Occasionally the view has curb appeal and even screams "New York City!"
But mostly the automobile is a huge pain and forces compressed photos, making it hard to put a little distance between subject and camera. On the city streets the occasional Ed Koch leftover "DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE" becomes a welcome sign for photographers. "No Standing Anytime" is just as good.
I often thought of doing a photo spread and just calling it "Johnny Pump" because there is no parking for fifteen feet in either direction of a fire hydrant.
Intersections can be a friend too.
It seems that to be street photography, the photos need people interacting with their environment. Even though New Yorkers almost never question being photographed I never liked the idea of intruding on other people's personal space. While trying to capture the city, my taking up street photography was the product of "chimping" architectural photos. Photos of street scenes are not as easy to take as they seem. Often buildings seem like they are falling over or sidewalks look like ramps, so waiting for the street to clear I would often take practice shots and examine the viewer for problems. I would come home and the practice shots worked much better.
If you want to try taking photos with the buildings standing up straight, the best I can offer is take the photo with the camera body parallel the building facades and crop out all the extra sidewalk later. In the photo below of the Gay Liberation Monument in Sheridan Square Park, I was looking through the subject and to the buildings in the background, making sure the buildings seemed to be standing up straight and cropping out a bunch of ground bricks later.
Of course there is a little more going on in that photo than buildings standing up straight and that is a composition where I cheated. The models never move. Here is a SoHo view that is not what you might expect and an example of two people making the picture more interesting. Just the setting I was looking to capture and with little to no invasion of privacy, the body language helps tell the story.
Actual living breathing people are erratic and the challenge of getting the composition right while capturing some sort of statement from the subjects makes street photography fun. Can a photo work when the people have their backs turned to the camera? This red triangle study is just an urban version of Walk into the Paradise Garden by W. Eugene Smith.
Getting buildings to look square and upright is a bit hard when shooting on an angle. A ladder would help but sometimes it just dosen't work. I just make one line vertical and hope for the best.
The perspective with a vertical composition is more forgiving as in the column study with yawning Airedale. Sometimes a foreground object can act like the tablecloth in Young Woman with a Water Pitcher and add some separation. You can look but don't touch.
The best way to keep angled architecture looking straight and this is a good reason to buy a camera with an articulating screen, is to hold the camera over your head as high as possible. Shooting blind because I did not get a movable screen I wound up cutting off the top line in this composition. Or I could pretend I was being artistic.
Photographing people started out with the wide views. Some landmarks are almost impossible to capture without people and I just started waiting for the right mood. In many ways that makes it personal. Here's a setting that reminds me of a street photography setting for hippie be ins and student protest. On Sunday in Washington Square park it was about two tourist looking for something to do in their New York guides and a little boy in green, framed by a white doorway from where Will Smiths recently fought off an army of fast moving zombies.
Now instead of standing in a busy place waiting for the crowd to clear, I'm waiting for some people powered perspective to walk into the shot. In looking for an identity as a street photographer I try to not intrude and offer people engaging with the environment without making it a people shot, the essence of action.
Of course I never turn down an invitation.
I guess these are just like sharing snapshots. Do these photos represent art or just visual recordings where I'm trying to increase skills through practice, practice, practice? Perhaps I'm just reliving old memories.
Whenever I do anything that seems even slightly original it is because the view I want to capture is in too tight a place to get a conventional composition. This attractive mural in a vest pocket playground is an example but nothing to write home about.
Just looking.
And then looking a little closer.
Here are a few more memories of days gone by. Now it seems that some landmarks look just right feeling a bit lonely and some just want to look occupied.
Okay, the shadows are getting long. Time to go home with the Sunday paper.
And there's that graffiti truck again.
But wait, New Yorkers are suppose to be cocky. Since this is a New York City street diary, not a place for second city crust but the town that makes even Naples jealous, I'll close out with Pizza!
Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson