This slightly edited post was first published on the Substack newsletter, Photos, mostly on October 25th, 2023.
I have heard many times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions but my own particular highway is instead pockmarked with the potholes of projects, plans, essays, and ideas that life doesn’t gift me time enough to finish. The 12th and final essay of my 1st year of this Photos, mostly newsletter was intended to be the 1st of an annual series, a State of the Union of Street Photography. So much has been written of late that we have killed street photography (nonsense), or that street photography must evolve with the times (worth considering), or that a new generation has done so already (debatable, in the most sincere sense). It seemed compelling, and certainly relevant, to pull the many threads together and assess where street photography stands in 2023, then do so towards the end of 2024 and off into the future.
This month, in lieu of an essay, I will lay out my goals for Photos, mostly for the next year but before that, I chose to write something a touch more personal.
What Street Photography Has Taught Me aBout Me
I returned to street photography in what I later discovered was a post-lockdown mental health crisis that shook my life like a snow globe and let the glitter fall as it may. Suffice it to say that leaving music behind to pick up a camera again was a surprise even to me. Nevertheless, it has indelibly drawn the direction of my life since. 3 years have passed and I have shot over 300 rolls of film, learned essential lessons from 2 master street photographers, made some great photographs (and some terrible ones, too) left corporate life, returned to school, and started this newsletter.
Though I’m sure therapy played its part, street photography has helped me understand myself as a creative person and restored the confidence I had lost in my final days in music. I wonder then what street photography has taught me about myself in the post-pandemic years.
Help The Aged
Approaching my 40s, I had experienced an unconscious, self-inflicted shame of being a middle-aged musician starting again with a new band. Pop culture doesn’t look kindly on that trope. The man-child boyfriend of the main character. He’s in a band in his 40s, confident he can still make it. I prayed not to be that guy. Leaving music behind to turn back to photography, which has no evident comparable stigma, I became more comfortable with ageing. I’m still not delighted about my ever-higher hairline, but I don’t mind the grey creeping into my beard.
A pressure valve has opened and the panic of time passing has eased. I felt no flicker of uncertainty and no shame or embarrassment returning to school in my 40s to study photography. In fact, being 44 years old with a student discount has been a delight. Getting older as a photographer certainly doesn’t mean finding myself over the hill. As long as I can stay healthy and ambulatory, street photography offers an enduring, satisfying creative practice, one that I adore, for many years to come.
On Mental Health
In my interview with Kathryn Vercillo in her Create Me Free publication, we discussed how both music and photography have affected my mental health and how it influences how and why I create. It’s a candid, honest interview about my struggles with mental health and creativity and I am very proud of it. The most crucial lesson street photography has taught me over the last 36 months is that despite passing as an extrovert, I am undeniably introverted and create with much more ease on my own. In the interview, I discussed how through therapy, the pandemic, and beginning to photograph again helped me realise and accept this. For more, I recommend the interview in full.
A Ruthless Editor
Though I learned many things from my time with master street photographers Richard Kalvar and Bruce Gilden, last year; the strongest lesson I took was to photograph more and to be brutal in my edit. Since then, I have become an uncompromising, critical editor of my own work and that of others. Being tough in an edit is what sets a good street photographer apart from the average. I have learned to trust my instinct for what is strong work, and quickly identify bad. However, people tell me that I can be too severe in editing my own work, and I may perhaps be unfairly rejecting photographs that are good enough for consideration.. In good humour, I dismiss it as perfectionism but I suspect it is a deeper need to keep my imposter syndrome quiet.
To Learn And Improve
A harsh edit results in more than a little critical evaluation of my own work. A successful roll of film may give my rapacious ego a stroke, while a bad day’s photography brings the sullen cloud cover of self-doubt and disappointment. Either way, my instinct is to ask how I might improve the photograph if I made it again. while relentless critical evaluation of my own mediocre, rejected photographs can be exhausting (give yourself a break, my partner will tell me) I am confident it is the way I best set my current level and strive to further learn and improve. That desire to get a little better, every day, is as greedy as my ego. (Almost, she chimes in, again.)
On Ethics
Something difficult to miss, returning to street photography after over a decade, has been the change in attitudes to the practice both from photographers and readers alike. Ethics are an oft-raised topic of conversation, as is the right to privacy. I often compare my practice in my 40s to that of the impetuous, impulsive street photographer of my 20s. I still advocate and practise candid street photography and, for authenticity, in most circumstances though not all, it is better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. When a photograph is made with sincere, honest intention and empathy, there is nothing to be ashamed of.
There are circumstances, however, where I have found my awareness and my ethics have shifted. For my younger self, anything was fair game. Now older, wiser, and more aware, I think more about gender and power dynamics, I question my biases and whether I am othering subjects, and I consider the lives of those that I photograph. Regular reevaluation of these things helps to draw a set of moral and ethical lines within which I feel comfortable working, however, I feel that sticking to 1 simple rule keeps me on the right path: Don’t be a dick.
And finally…
If you’ve enjoyed this issue, I’d be very grateful if you could recommend it to any photography-loving friends.
This newsletter is free to read, however, I’ve recently left corporate life and returned to school, so if you like what I do, please consider buying me a roll of film. You can do so by clicking here, or by aiming your camera at the QR code below.
I’m partial to some of that Tri-X 400 if you’re asking. Thank you!