On the Bus and Chanting: Getting ready for the streets

Daydreaming Girl (Melbourne Australia October 2014)

It's a thirty minute bus ride from where I'm staying to the centre of the city where I've been going to wander the streets and photograph. Not far really and not such a bad ride. The bus cuts through a range of suburbs, past parks and altogether it's nothing to complain about.

Yesterday I began the ride as I usually do: staring out the window and just kind of looking at the passing scene. But, then, I thought: I don't want to look around, I want to close my eyes. So I did. Not to rest as such, but to just get centred, grounded if you like. More than this though there was a sense that I wanted to prepare in some way. Now, of course this was not the first time I'd felt the need to prepare for a session on the streets; it's just that I liked the way it all just seemed to "happen" this time.

So, I closed my eyes and took some deep breaths to relax a bit (not the easiest concept for me this relaxation business). I didn't sense that I wanted to just let my mind wander, so I began to chant:

Om Mani Padme Hum

This Sanskrit phrase is the most widely used mantra among Buddhists. Of course it can be literally translated, but that would only give a partial clue to its meaning. Over the years I have settled on my own interpretation:

Allow the wisdom which is inherent in all things but usually unseen and unknowable make itself known to me

So, why a Buddhist chant? Well, firstly let me say I do not use it because it is a Buddhist chant; I use it because I've come to feel it is right for me. On one level I like it because of the meaning, on another level it is the repetition of the sounds that help settle my mind, help ground me and even (on some rare occasion!) help me to really relax. As a humanist, I see no contradiction in using a "religious" chant. The meaning of this one is really about tapping into something that lies within us all. A kind of spiritual idea, it is true. But spiritual isn't always religious

Okay, you might ask, but why on the bus on the way to a session of photography on the streets? Well, this is the good bit. Spending that almost 30 minutes chanting, helped me to clear my mind to a degree; it calmed me; and it allowed me to feel open to receive.

Being open to receive is important for me as I walk the streets with my camera. It allows me to wait for a person, scene, situation, photograph, to come to me as opposed to me really having to look for or seek out those opportunities. But, while I am not "looking" I am more able to actually "see". And, at that moment of seeing, I am in a mental state that enables me to act and to make the photo I am meant to make. It allows this to take place without all the intellectualizing and over thinking that can so easily take over (and you can trust me when I say I need all the help in this area that I can get). It's the old right brain vs left brain story; the difference is that this time of preparation (which in my case involves chanting) helps to get the two halves of the brain working together.

So, did this all help me on the streets yesterday? I did feel more open, more relaxed and more "available". That's a good word: available. I guess another way to put it is that I was ready for whatever came my way. Did it result in "better" photos? I suppose that's not really for me to say. But in a sense it's not the point. Being more open as a street photographer is only partly about making better photos; it's also about being open to enjoy the experience, to be available for quality interactions with other people and above all to not be quite so judgemental as we (okay I really mean me here) might normally be.

By way of a finish, I am going to paste an image of the mantra in its original script form. Why? Because it really is quite a beautiful image in its own right and I like it a lot.

Peace

Just another day on the street: A smile and a Chat about Changing Cities:

A Smile for the Camera (Sydney Australia May 2015)

It's no secret to anyone who spends time on the streets of any city, that cities are constantly changing, ever evolving beasts. I see it all the time of course, in both little and big things. Today I was shown another example; this time I guess it was a big thing.

The photograph above was made on the platform of a train station and, as you can see, the backdrop is pretty spectacular. In fact, the bridge is precisely the reason I was there! Anyway the man you see smiling here is doing so because he has just noticed me and my camera. He'd been pointing his mobile phone in the direction of the bridge and I was pointing my camera at him pointing his phone. You get the drift.

Me:     Great view isn't it? I shouted to him as I saw him notice me (but only after he shared this smile                       with me)

Him:   Yes it's beautiful

Me:     Well I actually got off the train to get some photos of the view and the bridge. Thanks for
            posing" for me.

We both laugh

Him:      I was taking a photo of a building down there (pointing to one of the two smaller
              buidlings in the middle of the frame)

Me:        Really?

Him:      I used to work there and now they're tearing it down

Me:       Why? (I was shocked because those buildings don't look that old.)

Him:      Redevelopment. They're buidling something much taller

Me:       Well I guess it's a prime location

Him:      It is yes. I just had to get a photo before it was gone.

With that his train pulled in and we waved a goodbye.

Cities change and evolve. Buildings get taller. Especially when there's a view like this one on offer.

PS
Here's the one I made as he made his photo and before he turned and saw me.

Unknowing Pose (Sydney Australia May 2015)

In Every Face There are Stories

Do Not Forsake Me (Melbourne Australia June 2011

Everybody's face tells you about the society they live in and what they're feeling inside.  Faces are maps.

Sue Ford  (1943-2009)

Last year I had the good fortune to come across an exhibition of work by the important Australian photographer Sue Ford. It isn't often that I go to photographic exhibitions, which I guess sounds a bit odd coming from a photographer keen on learning and developing. The truth is, I find them to be, on the whole, boring. They rarely seem to me to be overly revealing of either the photographer(s) featured or of their work. Oftentimes they are simply marketing exercises put together with the view to what will sell.

The Sue Ford exhibition (held at the National Gallery of Victoria and billed as a major retrospective of "her artistic life and career") was a surprising exception. I came away feeling I had discovered an important artist and that I had learned about her work. I felt strongly that I had been shown the artist's inspirations, motivations and methods; I had a real sense of what she was trying to say. And I felt I had been allowed to see a fair representation of her prolific and varied output. I left the exhibition feeling renewed and excited. While Ford wasn't a street photographer, there was something familiar about her work and her aesthetic that I really resonated with and which I am sure has had an impact on my own work and thinking.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of who Sue Ford was and what she was about, here's the bio from that show:

Sue Ford was a pioneer of Australian photography, and one of the most important practitioners to emerge in the wave of 1970s feminist photographers. This retrospective exhibition celebrates her artistic life and career. It brings together key photographs, digital prints, collages and films created over an almost fifty-year period, as well as important archival materials.Ford’s work was both personal and political, and shows a fascination with private, shared and forgotten histories. Several concurrent strands become apparent when surveying Sue Ford’s practice, such as the influence of personal biography and a questioning of identity; an interest in gender issues and an advocacy and promotion of women in art and feminism more broadly; a serious connection to social discourse and contemporary politics; and a passionate interest in reconsidering and discussing the histories of Australia and its Indigenous people.Her prolific output also allows for a survey of the development of her unique experimentation with photographic, film, printing and multimedia techniques since the 1960s – processes which were connected, from the very beginning, by an interest in the politics of representation.

If you would like to learn more about this important artist, you can head to her official website here, where you will find more of her life story as well as an archive of her important works and other information. Well worth a visit, as is a more extensive search online

Peace

There are Angels in the Street: The Beats, Street Photography & Me

Angels Alone in the Crowd (Melbourne Australia March 2012)

A long time ago, I saw a book in a shop window. The cover caught my eye, as did the one word title. It was Kerouac by Ann Charters. A biography of the so-called leader of the Beat Generation. I went in and bought the book. And it changed my life in so many ways. 

Many of Kerouac's novels are now recognized as classics of mid 20th Century American literature and they heralded the rise of the Beats and then the hippies. They spoke to a generation of young people who, hungry for freedom, took to the road, wrote poetry, explored Buddhism, drank wine and sought out any adventure that the road threw up.

Anyway, I read that book several times and it confirmed for me the sense I already had that my life would be lived on the road, and it encouraged me to carry on trying to write poetry (and to a lesser extent drink wine and seek out adventure).  Of course I then went on to read the road book to end all road books On the Road, the novel for which Kerouac is most known and which even now remains hugely popular. The immediacy of the writing and its jazz rhythms, make reading the book an experience to remember.

Since that first encounter I have read almost all of Kerouac's writing and a large number of books about him and other members of the so-called Beats. One of the biographies I read (several times in fact) is Memory Babe by Gerald Nicosia. Along with many other Beat enthusiasts, I think this is by far the best Kerouac biography. (Read it, even if you are not interested in Kerouac or the Beats; it's a wonderful book in its own right)

In a very real sense it is my study and reading of works by and about the Beats that has informed much of my thinking about street photography and the vision for it that I have developed over the years. In my latest reading of Memory Babe (don't you just love that title?), one paragraph in particular struck me as being perhaps an idea that had "sunk in" the first time around and went on to help form my thinking: 

There is no understanding of these incipient "Beats" at this point in their lives (the late 40s) without referencing to their overwhelming sense of the holiness of the street, which is to say the holiness of every spot of ground trod on by man (ie human beings).

The Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the 19th Century, put forward the notion that the divine is present in nature and in humanity, and that we can experience this divine essence by engaging with and learning from the natural environment. What Kerouac and the other Beat writers did in their writing and in the way they tried to live their lives was to extend to the urban environment this same quality of the divine (I should add here that the early Transcendentalists would probably have rejected this idea: for them it was nature that was where the divine could be experienced as an antidote to the dehumanizing and spirit poor "man made" institutions, modern technologies, cites and towns.).

The beats (like the Transcendentalists before them) proposed the idea that it was not only the environment that was holy, but that the people who inhabited the environment (those who spent their lives on the street in whatever capacity) were also holy. For Kerouac and the others, these people, especially the "beat down" ones are angels. Poet Allan Ginsberg even had his own definition:

Angel: A being who is as evolved spiritually as he is degraded in body

For the beats, especially for Kerouac, the more beaten down by life a person was, then the more angelic they became. Of course there are many ways to define being beaten down by life, and it would be a very rare person who hasn't felt totally beat at some time or other, whether they are in dire straits and homeless, alone and in deep poverty, or have a cushy job, nice house and loads of money, family and a "good life". 

As a rule, I don't photograph people who appear to be really beat down such as homeless people. Nor do I photograph anyone who is in a severely distressed or otherwise vulnerable state. But, occasionally, I find I have photographed a person (or people) who appears to have had a tough time, who maybe gives off a "vibe" of being tired or fed up or just plain sad with life, or their day or their partner, or whatever. This is, of course, an essential aspect of the human condition: to be tired or fed up or sick of the way things are. It is just the way life is.

At any rate, I have over time, noticed the occasional appearance of the word angel in a title that has popped up for an image I'm working on. The photo above is just one example. This couple seemed to me to be tired and perhaps upset about something. Maybe they'd had a tiff? Or had received some bad news? Or maybe they were breaking up? Who can say? Whatever the truth, they appeared to me to be beat.

In a funny sort of way, I think of all the people I photograph as angels of one sort or another. Like I say, we've all felt beat at one time or another haven't we? Also, angels are known to bring messages to people, and I reckon most if not all the people who grace my photographs with their presence have something to say to me.

Peace

Paul's Pictures Hits the Beach and a Lesson is Learned about what Street Photography Really Is

Longboard Walkers (Sydney Australia February 2015)

There is so much debate going on around the question, "what is street photography?". And, don’t worry, I have absolutely no intention of entering into that debate. I don't mean to say that I don't have my own definition, my own interpretation; far from it: I know precisely what it is for me. If any of you are interested, just type in "define street photography" into your search engine. You will come up with enough reading material to last a lifetime. And, don't even think about looking at the differences between street photography and social documentary: some people say there are a heap of differences, others say the genres overlap. For me, or rather for the majority of my work, the genres are more or less the same.

Anyway, moving along a little. I was rereading the definition of street photography on Wikipedia, and really liked the first paragraph (on the whole):

Street photography is photography that features the human condition within public spaces. Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic

The "human condition" and "within public places" are two of the elements that speak to me. No need to be "on the street" (though I have to say, that's where I spend most of my time and do most of my work), and not even in urban environments, though my street photography is almost exclusively in urban areas. Just my preference really.

And, for me the second paragraph also resonates: 

Framing and timing can be key aspects of the craft with the aim of some street photography being to create images at a decisive or poignant moment. Street photography can focus on emotions displayed, thereby also recording people’s history from an emotional point of view. Similarly, Social Documentary photographers document people and their behaviour in public places for the purpose of recording people's history and other purposes; 

I think it's probably fairly clear that the image above does reflect the ideas expressed in these quotes from Wikipedia. Of course, for me this definition might be a little limited in its scope. For instance, I would add that my work seeks to not only record but to celebrate humanity and the human condition in a way that is guiuded by love, compassion and empathy.

I've written before that, while the focus of my work is not on the camera or the technical side of things, I do feel a responsibility to make the best possible photograph I can in order to do justice to the people who are gracious enough to appear in those photographs. So, I do take careful notice of framing and timing when I can. And, while I do believe that there are no ordinary moments, I do try to make my photographs at what we might call a "decisive" moment; that moment that allow for the expression of that extra something. It's hard to explain, but you know it when you see it. 

Longboard Walkers is for me one such image. On a day threatening to storm, some surfers walk along the sand while surfable waves roll in (odd as it may sound, the waves which look pretty tame in this photo, are actually at least six feet. And who says cameras never lie?). You can almost hear the conversation: where should we get in? Who's going first? And you can almost sense the emotions: the excitement and anticipation; even a bit of anxiety: after all it was a wild day.

Above all, the photo for me shows us a moment in time, a moment in history even. Longboards seem to be back in fashion after a long while out of sight, at least from what I've seen anyway. The photo says to me, this is life being lived; it says that, for some, there is excitement to be had in connecting with nature; it speaks of freedom, friendship, challenge, open spaces. It also gets me thinking about life, and how I really should carry on doing the things I love, cherishing the freedom I have, along with the love and connections in my life.

I know, this is my own photo, I made it; well along with the surfers and the waves and the stormy sky. So, you might think, it will obviously mean something special to me. But, if people looking at it get even a fraction of what I've been able to, then I will be well pleased and know that I have done my job.

Peace