Selected NYC-SPC Weekly Briefs

Off The Street (June 13, 2019)

Last week I went on a road trip in the southwest, driving from Dallas to Los Angeles over the course of a week. I was photographing the whole time, and it got me thinking about the idea of street photography that doesn’t happen on the street.

I don’t really want to open the “definition of street photography” can of worms today… But it seems pretty clear to me that the term is fundamentally a misnomer, since the presence of a street is certainly not the defining characteristic of this genre of photography. The most obvious expansion of the street is into other urban public spaces, such as parks, subways, boardwalks, museums, etc. But I think street photography as many of us practice it can go well beyond even those boundaries.

Ultimately, for me, street photography is an attitude, an approach. It’s a matter of going out into the world with a camera, spontaneously and without a predetermined agenda – or even an intention to document. As I’ve touched on before, I think that this type of photography ends up being more about the photographer and the feelings that they are trying to express in their take on the world than it is about the ostensible subjects. I sometimes use the term “straight photography” to describe this, but I certainly don’t want to renounce the word “street” since it still represents a meaningful tradition and a lineage of others who have worked in the same way.

Last week on my trip, I took “street” photographs on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, but I also photographed on hikes, at truck stops, border patrol checkpoints, and in hotel rooms with my girlfriend. More and more, I see this all as part of the same impulse. And I’ve become more interested in putting together photographs from disparate sources and seeing how they resonate. For those who call ourselves street photographers, we must remember that anywhere can be our street.

Louis Faurer (June 20, 2019)

Today we’re going to look at the work of Louis Faurer (1916-2001), a wonderful but seemingly nearly forgotten NYC street photographer mainly active in the 1940s and 50s. Faurer was born in Philadelphia but moved to New York in the 1940s, where he became close friends (and actually shared a darkroom) with Robert Frank. Faurer made a living shooting fashion for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well as assignment work for other magazines. He moved to Europe in the 1960s and taught at various schools later in life; he stopped photographing after being hit by a car in 1984, and died in 2001.

Nostalgia can be a powerful force in photography. On one hand, photographs made in public spaces do acquire a certain energy merely through the passage of time. As an NYC history buff I often run into articles online revealing some unearthed archive of photographs made in “old New York,” whether the 1930s or 1980s. Usually the work is mediocre photographically, but still compelling to look at, because the world these pictures show is gone. On the other hand, nostalgia and “oldness” can make it challenging to appreciate even great work. Some may find it difficult to be inspired by the work of Walker Evans, for example, because the Model T Fords and 1930s fashions can make it seem less relevant to today.

Although Faurer’s great work is from another time, his images cut through this cloud of nostalgia with an emotional connection. There’s an honest, heartfelt quality to his work that bridges the gap of 70 years and makes these pictures as powerful today as the moment they were made. Faurer often focuses on people who appear marginalized, on oddities, sometimes absurdity – with a clear influence on later photographers like Diane Arbus and Jeff Mermelstein. But Faurer approaches his subjects with sensitivity, even tenderness. He reminds us that street photography was and is a humanistic pursuit – a desire not just to record or “capture,” but to feel something. To share – both through the act of photographing and by looking at photographs – an emotional bond with our fellow travelers in this strange and beautiful life.

Robert Frank (July 4, 2019)

For today’s Weekly Brief I thought, what better topic than The Americans by Robert Frank. Although it’s one of the most influential and widely discussed photography books ever, I think in some ways it’s still underrated (or forgotten?) by many in the current generation of photographers. Even those of us who worship at the altar of Garry can forget that Garry worshipped at the altar of Robert. Or maybe we think of The Americans as something belonging in the past… we know it’s a great work but we don’t pull it off our shelf very much.

I think that all too often in today’s art world, photography is divided; there is “documentary” work that is based on a concept or agenda. The idea comes first, and the photographs are illustrations. They and their accompanying text are made in such a way as to tell us what to think – while “street” photography is discounted, since it superficially appears like the product of aimless wanderings.

But Frank demonstrated how photographs made spontaneously, without a preplanned agenda – but with a keen eye, an open heart, and the skill to create images of clarity and depth – can bridge that gap and create a body of work that is both a personal exploration and an incisive document of a time and place. Frank doesn’t tell us what to think, but he shows us what he felt… and provokes us to feel it too.

And looking through the book, I do feel something. Not just about the America of 1955 but about the America of 2019. As much as the pictures are emblematic of a time and place, they are also timeless – not in the sense of classic, but in the sense that the America Frank depicted is not that far from our own. We’re all tempted to think that our era is unique. But looking at these pictures we see that so many of the themes depicted in the book – racial tensions, class disparities, disillusionment with consumer culture – are still just as relevant in 2019 America. So maybe if you have a chance this weekend, take another look. You’ll learn about the America that was… and about the America that is, and the one that maybe can be.

Yes (July 11, 2019)

Today I want to reflect on one of my favorite quotations about photography, by Henri Cartier-Bresson (who in addition to being a photographic master was also incredibly eloquent about the medium – check out the book Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998 by Aperture and the 1973 short film The Decisive Moment, which is available on YouTube).

“The camera can be a machine gun. It can be a psychoanalytical couch. It can be a warm kiss.”

A machine gun: It’s no coincidence that we use the word “shoot” to describe the act of taking a picture. Street photography is hunting. We blend in to the background – not with camouflage, but with body language. We approach our prey discreetly. We raise our instrument, aim, hold our breath. We take the shot, following through with our whole body. The camera is more than just a tool. It’s a weapon. We don’t use it to fight our subjects – we use it to fight the endless flux of time and space, and come back from the wilderness with something that we took that is ours forever – a print on the wall, like a deer head over the mantle.

A psychoanalytical couch: The photograph is not just a window out into the world, but a mirror inwards towards the self. Although we ostensibly photograph others, our “subjects,” the real subject is always ourselves. That’s why street photography isn’t documentary; it’s not about collecting information about the world, it’s about making sense from chaos of the street through our own unique vision. It’s the bed I slept in, the breakfast I ate, the friend I met, the person I love, that all brought me to THAT moment, to stand in THAT spot and raise the camera to my eye at THAT 1/500th of a second, that I chose, that’s mine and nobody else’s. And the more I do it, the more I learn – about how I feel, what interests me, who I am.

A warm kiss: The photograph is an act of love.  It is a moment of joy. It’s a recognition of an order in front of me, with my eye, yes, but also with my heart. It’s a human connection. It’s a feeling. And at the moment of that feeling I do not think. I say yes. I open my heart. Click, yes. Click. I am in love. Yes.

The Corner (July 18, 2019)

Today I want to talk about an issue that is probably known to all artists. What do you do when you find that you’re repeating yourself? When you find a certain pattern, technique, or habit that you worry might be turning into a crutch?

The northwest corner of 6th Ave and 42nd St is one of my favorite spots in NYC to shoot. There’s something about the particular mix of people and the pedestrian flow there that is attractive. Back in 2016-17 I used to shoot there often, and several of my favorite images from that period were from that corner. But soon, at NYC-SPC critique sessions people started calling it “Sebastian’s corner” and I joked that I would charge royalties to shoot there. I got self conscious about it, and started worrying that it had become a crutch. So I went elsewhere, and avoided that spot for the better part of a year.

In that moment, I needed to move on. I realized that I had solved an artistic problem. I was making pictures there, but I wasn’t learning anything from them anymore. I had exhausted the possibilities, or so I thought. And I ended up broadening my route, taking walks to new parts of the city. I got looser and more free. I had to leave that corner.

In the meantime, my friend Youngjae Lim took up the same spot. Inspired by some of the paintings of David Hockney, he started a deep exploration of that corner, building increasingly complex photographs. Repetition wasn’t a question to Youngjae – it became the whole point. He delved deeper, devoting whole shooting days to that one corner and returning to it for months. He pushed through the initial problem, discovered more layers and worked through those, making pictures that were more and more complex – and creating a group of pictures that stands as a body of work on its own. Seeing his work even got me to eventually come back.

In the end, both paths are valid. When we hit that wall – that realization that we’re repeating ourselves – we can take it as a signal to move on, but we can also push through and see what’s on the other side.  It may be nothing, but it may also be the key to the next stage of the journey.

9/11 (September 11, 2019)

I woke up today and realized it was 9/11, which prompted me to pull out Joel Meyerowitz’s book Aftermath, as well as a recent addition to my collection, the collaborative book Here Is New York.  As I began to look through them, I felt a wave of emotions. It doesn’t seem right to say I’m nostalgic when I look at pictures from 9/11. We tend to think of “nostalgia” as some kind of warm fuzzy feeling. But then I remember that the root “algia” means “pain.” So nostalgia is, in a sense, pain for the past. A sense of longing, or a sort of incompleteness.

On 9/11/01 I had just turned 18, just started college, and had just moved to NYC two weeks before. Which means that this year, 9/11 forms the halfway point in my life so far. In the same way that “the 1960s” as a distinct period probably didn’t begin until JFK was assassinated in 1963, so too the new millennium didn’t begin for my generation until 9/11. And my adulthood essentially began that day; certainly some sense of innocence and peace ended. So besides the unspeakable tragedy and despair, that day will always wrapped up in a lot of other feelings and memories for me.

But what does all this have to do with photography? When Joel Meyerowitz started photographing Ground Zero, his goal was to create a historical record. But his photographs are so much more than that. And the other talented photographers who went out that day – street photographers, our kind of photographers – their images form so much more than a historical record. That’s why “documentary” is such an inadequate word for what we do. As Robert Frank taught us so well, it’s fine to record, to document, to capture. But our real job as photographers is to feel. To be ready; to approach the world with a sense of openness. And through our work, our viewers – like me today looking at these books – won’t just see, or know, but will feel something too.

Curran Hatleberg (October 10, 2019)

Although NYC-SPC is obviously focused on street photography, I want to occasionally highlight great work that may not necessarily fall strictly under the “street” genre, but which shares an aesthetic or a spirit that I think would still be appreciated by those who are interested in street photography. In some ways, I think the street photo world can be a bit of an insular bubble, and we might not always be as aware of what’s going on in the larger art world. And similarly, that fine art/museum world – with rare exceptions – seems to place little value on current street photography.

So today I want to bring these worlds together and talk about Curran Hatleberg, an incredibly talented contemporary photographer who is making waves in the art world, but whose work anyone attuned to street photography can appreciate. Hatleberg has been traveling around the US for a decade making work, and was recently included in the Whitney Biennial. I’ve known of Hatleberg’s work for a few years, but ever since seeing his prints in person at the Whitney recently, I haven’t been able to get his pictures out of my head.

Hatleberg’s work differs from what most of us would characterize as street photography, because he often interacts and collaborates with his subjects. He spends time with them, anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks. His work also frequently involves elements of portraiture and landscape. But otherwise, it’s not that far from street photography, since just about everything else is spontaneous. His travels and stops are largely unplanned, and the images appear candid and unposed. They often depict oddity and juxtaposition; like some of the best street photography, many are funny and disconcerting in equal measure.

But what’s also particularly striking – especially in the context of the Biennial – is that they are decidedly not documentary. In the politically charged world of 2019, when so much of the work in the Biennial was explicitly topical, “straight” photography (that isn’t just illustrating a predetermined concept, or perhaps depicting a specific marginalized group) seems quite rare. But Hatleberg keeps his photographs open ended. His titles reveal only the year, and there are no captions; we know only that we are looking at America. But by doing this, he creates an effect far stronger than any caption or manifesto. He takes advantage of the unique descriptive power of the still photograph, trusting that his direct and unadorned portrayal will help us understand something more about our world, and each other.

Storytelling? (November 21, 2019)

Today I want to talk about the idea of storytelling or narrative in photography. The other day I saw an article in the New York Times about the work of a mid-century Times photojournalist Sam Falk, with the title “Every Photo Tells a Story. His Spoke Volumes.” But I immediately thought of what Garry Winogrand said: “There isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability ... They do not tell stories. They show you what something looks like.”

So which is correct?

As the New York Times demonstrates, our casual discourse about photography just assumes that storytelling is something photography does. And I see many photographers talking about their own work in terms of storytelling or narrative. It’s such a common idea that I rarely see it even debated or discussed. It’s just understood.

And yet, I think Garry was right. Look at any photograph. Without knowing anything else about it – without additional information that isn’t actually contained in the image – can you actually know what’s going on? Not only is a photograph mute, but it’s still. There’s no time element. So actually there isn’t even a possibility of a story. If you create one around it, it’s based only on assumptions.

But – and this is the most important part – that’s not a limitation! I think it actually opens up the medium to a greater set of possibilities. Because while a photograph can’t tell a story, it can show – or more precisely, it can describe – better than almost any other art form. Even film can’t really describe something as precisely as a photograph; although a motion picture might be composed of individual still images, they are constantly in flux, just like our experience of real life.

Alec Soth and many others have compared photographs to poems, and I think that’s much more accurate. A photograph doesn’t have narrative, but through its specificity and descriptive power, it can create a mood, an impression.  It can imply and suggest.  It can transmit a feeling.  And ultimately, isn’t that what it’s all about?