Lately, my hubby and I have been doing a lot of street photography, and we have been really enjoying it.
Well…maybe enjoy is not exactly the right word.
I actually love street photography and its cousin, documentary photography. In fact, most of my photo gods and goddesses are primarily documentary photographers. And what some people say is my best work – photographs I made in Cuba in 2014 – is street photography. Taking photos in the streets of Havana was fun…life is lived on the streets there, and people didn’t mind us snapping away in their neighborhoods. It was fun and colorful and musical. After that experience, I remember being excited to return home and devote some serious time and energy to honing my street photography skills.
Back home in Reno I tried, but it just wasn’t the same. There was nothing musical and artful about the experience. The streets were mostly empty. The folks on the street snarled at us if we pointed a camera in their general direction, and I always felt someone wanted to rip off my gear. And although legally I can photograph homeless people, I don’t. I don’t know their stories, and I don’t want to risk further disenfranchising someone who lives on the street just because they are there. So, with the exception of a few instances, I put street photography on the back burner.
This past fall, I was putting together a talk on Abstract Photography and came across some “intentional camera movement” (or ICM) abstracts I shot in the Midtown area of Reno five or six years ago and thought that I would like to try that technique again. I mentioned this to my hubby, and he said that he’d been itching to do some street photos as well. So out we went. Really, it was the same experience as in 2014. There was no one there that I would shoot, and there was nothing really interesting going on. We walked around just shooting stuff, but not getting much. Towards the end of our walk, we wound up at Reno’s old City Center bus station that has been abandoned for a while, which didn’t look too interesting. I peered inside the old building and took a few shots of the dark interior and the windows on the opposite side. “Meh,” I thought. “Not much here.” Oh well – at least we went, maybe got a few ideas for the future, had a great lunch at a yummy taco shop in Midtown, and went home. Maybe we’d try another day.
The majority of the photos were duds…except those at the old City Center. The photos captured something almost surreal - most of the interior of the building was blacked out, which created asymmetry with the negative space, and the windows and reflections overlapped each other making a double, triple, quadruple exposure effect, which was a little disconcerting. Not really the traditional street photography look, but I was intrigued. I edited all of them, and I thought I had something interesting. For the next few weeks, we ventured downtown, and I’d look for similar situations (dark negative space and multiple exposure effects). Again, I was intrigued with the results. But why? They are messy, unorganized, slightly surreal - unsettling.
These street photos are seemingly the total opposite of everything I love to do in photography – to be outside in nature with the dirt, the trees, the flowers, the water, the silence. Shooting downtown is the antithesis of this, and I feel overwhelmed. These feelings are definitely strong, and I can’t say I really enjoy the experience. When I’m nature, I can stay all day with my camera and love every moment. Being in the streets, I can only last a few hours. But in a weird way, I think these photos capture that feeling of being unnerved.
So the question is: Is this a valid experience to photograph?
They always say to make great photos, you need to photograph something your love. I don’t love the streets, I don’t love downtown. But for sure, I am experiencing some kind of visceral reaction, and maybe that is what I am capturing. Maybe it’s enough to experience some kind of strong feeling when you are shooting – to feel and capture something that’s your own.
In the end, I am not really sure about these photos. I kind of like them. I think they are capturing something. But are they so off-putting and confusing that they will be dismissed? I plan to submit these to a gallery in Reno for an exhibition this summer…we’ll see what the experts think.
In the meantime, I’ll try to make friends with this dis-quiet...and try to go shoot some more.
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