As a photographer you are haunted by the past. By what has been done very well before you. It seems unfair that those who came before, through no effort of their own, but due to the silly capriciousness of birth, should have an easier time at saying something new. Of course, this isn’t how it happened. They in turn had their demons from the past. Winogrand had Frank, Evans had Brady et al, Adams had Adams, etc. etc. There’s no use whining.
What you have to do is know what has come before, what is being done now that is good, what the world is all about, who you are and what you want to say, and how your tools work. These things should all hint at what should come next. Simple.
When I think of the very close-in street photography that I’ve been doing, in colour, I realise now why I can’t find many precursors. Shooting this way was technically very difficult, if not impossible, only 10 years earlier, let alone 40 or 50. Film was just not fast enough, and didn’t have the detail or range required in colour to do this work. I guess you could get close but you’d need to put a lot more effort in than you have to now (and it’s a lot of effort now!). From the video that I posted the other day you can see Mark Cohen, who is the closest that I’ve found to what I’ve been doing, using a flash to get enough light to get a clear, high shutter speed exposure. This is a different look to the more natural one that I’ve been getting.
And now with this new ‘dark’ direction, I think I’m going somewhere that was technically unfeasible in the past. Brassai couldn’t freeze someone running at night at 1/500s. The machines we have now allow us to look far more clearly, far more deeply than possible in the past. Movement can now be caught on film which the photographer could previously see but could do nothing about capturing. There is a whole expanse of night action that is opening up now. I don’t want to overplay my hand, it is still more difficult at night than in the day, the laws of light haven’t been upturned, but they’ve been pretty seriously messed up.
Posted 2 years ago
