I want to begin this post with a quote that the sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine once said
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera - Lewis Hine
But what does this quote refer to, and what did Lewis Hine mean by it?
Photographing a moment and making it beautiful is not easy but when you get the results it is very addictive and you want to photograph more and more, you want to tell with images what you saw, what caught your attention at the moment of the shot, photography lasts in time, words are carried away by the wind.
Fill your portfolio with interesting stories
Fill your portfolio with interesting stories and print on paper
The longer you have been photographing the more and better results you get, and, if you add to that that you print your photos on paper (and this is more than recommended) you are building your portfolio into something tangible, something that people and above all your children and your children's children will look at and hold with pride and excitement.
You will always feel proud of what you have photographed, do you know why? Because we, the photographers remember all the pictures we have taken, we remember how we saw through the viewfinder and what was the precise moment of the shot.
Photography lasts in time, words are carried away by the wind. - Miguelitor
Smoke movie
There is a scene in the film Smoke (Wayne Wang 1995) in which a tobacconist shows a friend a series of photographs, no less than 4000 photographs taken over 4000 consecutive days at the same time and place, he calls it his project, his life's work. His friend, with the same face that anyone would make when someone wants to show you 4000 is far from understanding that work, believing that all the photographs are the same, he turns one page after another until he reaches the end of the album although there are more albums waiting for him... 4000 photos take up a lot of space.
- You won't understand if you don't slow down," says the photographer.
- They are all the same - He answers with conviction
- Yes, they are all the same but each one is different from the other. There are sunny mornings, rainy days, summer light, autumn light, everyday days, weekends, people in coats and wellies, people in T-shirts and shorts, sometimes the same people, sometimes different people. Sometimes different people become the same, the earth revolves around the sun and every day the sunlight hits the earth from a different angle.... -He explains very patiently
This is when this friend begins to understand the project and the photographs on display. You can see the scene by clicking below.
Do you think this project could have been told in words? Of course it could, but very succinctly.
Every day for 12 years I take pictures at 8am in the morning in the corner of my workplace.
On Photography by Susan Sontag
On Photography (Susan Sontag)
You have probably heard of this book and most probably read it, I have it in a digital version where I underline, take notes and from time to time I take a look at quotes like
To collect photographs is to collect the world. Cinema and television programmes light up the walls, flicker and fade; but with still photographs the image is also an object, light, cheaply produced, easily transported, accumulated and stored.
In Godard's The Carabinieri (1963), two lazy lumpen peasants enlist in the king's army, tempted by the promise that they can loot, rape, kill or do whatever they like to the enemy, and get rich. But the suitcase of loot that Michel-Ange and Ulysse triumphantly carry back to their wives, years later, turns out to contain only postcards, hundreds of postcards, of Monuments, Shops, Mammals, Wonders of Nature, Means of Transport, Works of Art and other classified treasures from all over the world. Godard's joke vividly parodies the misleading charm of the photographic image.
Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious objects that constitute, and densify, the environment we recognise as modern.
Photographs are indeed captured experience and the camera is the ideal weapon of consciousness in its greedy mood.
To photograph is to appropriate the photographed. It means establishing a certain relationship with the world that looks like knowledge, and therefore like power.
Photographs, which store the world, seem to incite storage. They are glued into albums, framed and placed on tables, pinned on walls, projected as slides. Newspapers and magazines highlight them; police officers catalogue them; museums exhibit them; publishers compile them.
Conclusion
I find no reason not to photograph
Thank you for appearing here, dear reader
If you want to improve your street photography you can send me an email and I can follow up with challenges and exercises.
Thank you very much for being here dear reader, write any comment and share this post with anyone who might be interested, it will help me a lot to continue creating content like this. Also and if you would like to help I have my book PING PONG dialectic Street Vision at 50% discount, is a book of 80 black and white photographs made in 40 diptychs, where the viewer does not stop looking from left to right as if it were a ping pong match, The price is stipulated in Dollars of Hong Kong and it is about 15 euros
