In the 5 years the Tories shared a coalition with the Lib-Dems, those forced by circumstance of ideologically driven cuts to services and welfare had to turn to food banks to feed their families, and in fact, in 2015, the year of the next general election, over 1 million families were being fed through the food-bank charities. Newspapers told stories of people dying after the government took away their disability benefits, leaving them unable to feed themselves or heat their homes. A disgrace.

On 7th May 2015, Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the welfare-protecting, migrant-welcoming, NHS-defending, Trident-abandoning Scottish National Party. The majority of the UK, however, voted for another 5 years of Conservative Party austerity – a sickener for Scots already heartbroken at 2014’s Independence referendum. With Clegg out of the way, Cameron, now with no guard rails (such as they were), announced plans for an in/out referendum on the European Union—and we know how that turned out.

For the next term, Chancellor George Osborne laid out plans for another £8 billion in welfare cuts, and the Tories clearly had no plans to curtail austerity, even while the richest got richer, and people in dire need of support and care were left without it.

How on earth does this relate to Too Many Fireworks, or this release?

At the time, I was playing guitar in the prog-post-rock band, The Frozen North. I had collected an embarrassing array of effects pedals, and in my Mogwai, Godspeed, MBV obsessions, I loved nothing more than spending some time in our rehearsal room alone just making noise.

The evening following the election, I stayed late after rehearsal and expressed my sheer frustration, disappointment, and anxiety with noise, feedback and effects while recording some of the improvising. From the 37-minute session, I cut the best 13 minutes, called it Shark, and released it as a single on the label to raise money for the food bank in my home town of Airdrie.

While of course attractive to only a very niche audience, I nevertheless felt strongly about doing something, anything, that I could do. In the end, we raised £143 from the single across its various releases and gave it to the food bank. Given the abstract noise of the track, I imagine some of that was donation.

Still, I’m quite proud of it. It feels like a different life, when I had 2 huge cases of pedals and some other bits and pieces, and a room in which to destroy my hearing. In the “liner notes” on the label’s website, the single credit read: rage, anger, disappointment, disillusionment, hope, optimism, belief and guitars: Neil Milton

Trussell continues to raise money for food banks in the United Kingdom.

Shark was released on digital download on May 15th, 2015, and we gave it the catalogue number 2mf019. You can listen to the single here

The post TOO MANY FIREWORKS. AN ORAL HISTORY, MOSTLY. 2MF019 appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

It’s summer! Half a year has shot past since I last wrote to you. Back then, I was looking at the year behind us and sharing some wee stories. Now, I’m choosing to press the reset button, and I wanted to tell you why.

Photos, mostly

I began writing on Substack in late 2022 after being worn down by the endless algorithmic treadmill of social media. Facebook and Instagram were soul-destroying. Reddit held no attraction. Mastodon was a ghost town. Don’t even get me started on LinkedIn. What had been my favourite platform for many years, Twitter, was largely dead to me, later to become dead to most right-thinking folk – so many who lost huge follower counts.

In another life, I was the owner of a small independent record label called Too Many Fireworks. Something I learned, forgot, and learned again was that owning your own audience is crucial. It’s essential to have followers that can’t be taken from you should a platform close, merge, or become the personal plaything of a fascist ex-trillionaire.

Substack seemed attractive as the founders sold themselves as being an alternative to social media. Algorithm? What algorithm? Exactly what I needed, I thought. Over time, I grew Photos, mostly to a couple of thousand subscribers and wrote some in-depth and popular essays. Through Photos, mostly I met some lovely folk and found some excellent work. I created the now defunct Photostack list that’s been superseded since by other excellent indexes. Shame on Substack for still not having a Photography category!

So what’s the problem, pal?

The algorithmic changes Substack introduced over the last few years, from Recommendations to Notes, diluted the platform’s allure and my reason for choosing it. These features certainly had their positives. Would you have discovered Photos, mostly had it not been for them? Still, the walled garden I was promised was turning into a country park, everyone shouting at each other, and far too many happily hurling slurs.

The one frantically fluttering red flag I couldn’t live with was Substack’s lack of any moderation of substance for far-right-wing cranks. Transphobes, Holocaust denial, neo-nazi content all earning from, and making money for, Substack. The platform’s refusal to draw any rhetorical red lines began to seem less neutrality and more political choice. As Israel has conducted its horrifying genocide in Gaza, Substack has supported publications like The Free Press in pushing the flagrantly dishonest Zionist line. My own line had to be drawn, and I decided to stop posting to the platform last year. When human-trafficking tortoise, the manosphere’s own chinless wonder, Andrew Tate joined Substack, my decision seemed vindicated.

For what it’s worth, if anyone else is considering leaving Substack, there’s an excellent website with some history, articles, and options of where to go: leavesubstack.com

Gone, but not forgotten.

In my absence, though, the recommendation engine has continued to do its work. Some readers have fallen away, but others stumbled upon me and subscribed – welcome to you!

I have always planned to come back to the newsletter, though I couldn’t decide where and when. That was, until this week. In the midst of some long-needed website renovation, I had a reservoir of curiosity enough to click on Jetpack’s Newsletter option. Turns out, I didn’t need to find a Substack alternative; I had one right at home all along.

With a little time, patience, and tedious use of Cmd+C and Cmd+V, I’ve brought over the Photos, mostly archive to this website, resurrecting the newsletter along with it.

As with most creative decisions in my life, the name of this reborn newsletter was settled upon after excessive indecision and inner conflict, almost as if my life depended on it. Ridiculous. As a title, Photos, mostly worked on Substack as it somewhat unsubtly described the content of the newsletter in an ecosystem of writing that spanned from memoirists laying their life bare to independent journalists breaking stories of the corruption of governments.

The name was much less descriptive when found, as it now is, on the website of your friendly neighbourhood street photographer. A new name was required, and as I was nearing the end of my rope, I settled on The Contact Sheet. See what I did there?

The Contact Sheet

On The Contact Sheet, you’ll find the occasional essay on the philosophy and practice of street photography, highlights from what I’ve been photographing, works-in-progress, some photos, links to some stuff I’ve written on the website, some exclusive print offers, and in the future, maybe a return to the short-lived Conversations, mostly series.

As I’ve stolen the name Dispatches for elsewhere on the website, the monthly round-up of photography news and other bits and pieces also has a shiny new title, along with a simpler format, and it will appear, when I get it started, as f/stops.

You can revisit all the Photos, mostly posts that have recently moved over to the website, including the State of Street Photography 2023, now updated for 2026.

Even with the change of name and a simpler format, the newsletter will stay, mostly, the same. Like when Marathon became Snickers in the ’90s.

Still, I know this move away from Substack may lead some more casual readers to unsubscribe. I completely understand, and no hard feelings. Thanks for sticking with me during the Substack years. Good times!

If you decide to stick around, thank you. Truly. This move from Substack takes me away from the recommendation engine and the safety of the wider platform, setting me out on my own. So if you like what you read, please recommend The Contact Sheet to a friend or two. It’ll really help.

What’s next?

Much like Photos, mostly; both newsletters will appear monthly, each more or less on a biweekly schedule. Regular posts should start in August, so until then, have a great summer!

Cheers!

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Photos, mostly becomes The Contact Sheet appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

Street photography, with its many philosophies and practices, and its long and eventful history, has been a cornerstone of the art of photography since its very beginning. One could make a convincing argument that the first photograph to contain people, Daguerre’s The Boulevard du Temple (1838), was a street photograph – a shoeblack and his customer stopped long enough to be caught on film through the French photographer’s long exposure. Before it was even known as such, street photography, from that of Atget to Webb, has recorded the modernisation of our world, and the vast assemblage of people that have inhabited it.

Several recent articles on Substack have been critical of the current state of street photography. From writers who argue it is dead, through others who worry it may have lost its soul, to those who posit it has no place in our privacy-conscious world. My own view on the state of street photography is somewhat more positive and while we must reflect on ethical, educational, technological, and artistic considerations and accept some change may be necessary, in this, my inaugural annual analysis of the state of street photography, I believe its present and future are bright.

Online Spaces

This newsletter was born of my frustration at the mediocre, insipid street photography found across social media on hashtag-streetphotography. Hasty snapshots of the backs of heads, distant photos of people on their phones, backgrounds photographed with passers-by where the ill-considered juxtaposition says nothing to the viewer, and vapid, reaching captions were all on display. Like many creative communities I experienced in my time in music, toxic gatekeeping was a problem in these online photography spaces, and as always those with the loudest voices had the least to say while simultaneously masking a distinct lack of ability. Instagram, Reddit, and Xtheeverythingapp, have become poor choices to find community.

Many people have written about Meta’s endless attempts to compete with other platforms through Instagram’s pivot to short-form video rather than serving its legacy of photography. With Stories, Reels, interminable ads, and now Instants, sharing photography on Instagram has become intolerable. It is a daily slalom, manoeuvring between this influencer and that, avoiding the algorithmic pitfalls in the hope that even the smallest percentage of those who follow you will see a photograph, and more often than not finding yourself bitterly disappointed by the lack of reach. Beware, of course, the curated accounts, especially those that offer to feature your photography for a fee. If it looks too good to be true, it often is. Among Instagram’s photography recommendations, you can find some excellent work. However, you have to do a lot of truffling to discover it.

After sidelining Instagram, I turned briefly to TikTok, however, the interminable grind required to cement a presence there was an immediate deterrent. The analogue community on TikTok is vibrant; however, with some exceptions, the algorithm presented me with a street photography community that seemed light on substance. So many so-called street photographers lumped in with those what do you do for a living? irritants. In an older TikTok skit, Friends actor Courtney Cox highlighted the obstacle course of influencers to be conquered by only walking down a New York street. TikTok may be a path for younger street photographers, but there is too little actual photography for me.

Reddit, not an online space famous for its harmony, is rife with the worst type of gatekeeping. On the platform’s most popular street photography Subreddit there was a fundamental debate about the very nature of street photography. Many users went so far as to characterise candid photography as abuse. The gatekeeping Subreddit owners and entitled moderators made even lurking in these communities an unpleasant experience, and I can’t recommend it.

So far, so bleak. Elsewhere, however, online street photography communities are welcoming and thriving. Many users are eschewing larger platforms for a more niche experience. Many users speak fondly of smaller social media apps. Vero launched with some intention of eschewing algorithms and filling the space Instagram was leaving behind, though it never fulfilled that potential. Foto, a launched a private beta then launched for all, however, remains comparatively niche. As Twitter became the Grok-dominated hellscape and many users decamped to federated spaces such as Mastodon, it opened the door for photographers to try a federated platform and many took to Pixelfed – even more so now since Meta’s repeated policy controversies. For film photographers, several niche platforms appeared and disappeared just as quickly, however, Grainery, while small, is an interesting place to find film photography, some of it from the street.

On Trump’s inauguration day, the day that Elon Musk threw up the Nazi salutes, there was another mass migration from Xtheeverythingapp. When Grok began allowing users to remove the clothes of women in photographs, more still. The logical destination was Bluesky. Though it has an unfair reputation of being unbearably libbed-up, it is a place that has become the principal home for photographers, journalists and artists escaping Musk, and a place that has built a thiving photography community.

Longer-form video content is a popular way to share street photography and discussions around the practice and philosophies of the art. YouTube remains the hub for all such creators. Street photography on YouTube, however, does seem to provoke strong feelings from the wider community and many of these Marmite creators are loved or hated with some intensity. Of the throng, Sean Tucker and Paulie B are 2 prolific creators who stand out.

Do It Yourself

Choosing to step back from social media, most of my work is now found here on my website, and street photographers would be wise to set out their own stalls. What use is a website, however, if no one visits?

A few years ago, Substack was an emerging platform and didn’t have the problematic relationship with the far right that it now has. While running the Photos, mostly newsletter there I began to both find my audience and discover other photography Substacks. Wesley Verhoeve, Andy Adams, Andrew Eberlin, Alice Zoo, and Reading the Pictures are writers of just a handful of excellent, recommended photography newsletters. Street photography is still, even now, largely a niche on the platform, though the platform hosts some excellent street photographers. Two notable and recommended accounts are Storydrops, and the African-focused Tender Photo.

For me, though, I just couldn’t get over Substack’s pandering to the right and far-right wing, and my decision to stop using the platform was somewhat vindicated when Andrew Tate was welcomed to the platform. No thank you.

Across the internet, street photographers who have developed their own websites offer a wide gamut of work, though it can be difficult to focus in on those worthy of attention. Many magazines and blogs collect some of the best street photography out there. Street Photography Magazine and Streetphotography.com offer both excellent photography and essays on the topic. Lensculture has a wider remit but offers a great deal of street photography. Websites of collectives and groups are also fecund spaces to find work from the top drawer. Up Photographers, in-public, Candid City, the Archive of Public Protests, and Un-Posed are a few that I return to regularly, however, there are many more to be found and forming a collective is a common, recent way for street photographers to organise themselves.

As we enter the second half of 2026, it is clear that the spaces in which street photography exists online are in the process of material change. In their attempt to remain relevant, Web 2.0 platforms are forfeiting many longtime users. New platforms are emerging, however, it will take time to discover whether they have staying power. Many former Twitter users feel burned after losing vast numbers of followers when leaving the platform. As algorithms prioritise engagement over quality and AI-generated content becomes ever more common, maintaining a one-to-one relationship with readers has become even more valuable. Advice from all quarters this year is to control one’s own following. Build a website, maintain a mailing list, and work directly with readers and viewers. Growth may be slower, but one’s audience is not at the whim of a tech billionaire.

Education

Education in Street photography is a cottage industry in and of itself. From newsletters and websites through films, books, online courses, and workshops, to mentorships and masterclasses. Learning to be a better street photographer has never been quite so easy, though with such choice comes a difficult decision on what option is best.

Street photography instruction and coaching come from a variety of sources, both active and passive. The passive, ingesting education from zines, books and films, is most often the starting point. Whether from classic, acclaimed photo books, expansive compilations, self-printed zines, or documentary films, much inspiration and learning can come from reviewing the stories and street photography of others.

There is no one-stop shop for street photography zines and short-run or self-published books, however, across the world, you will find them stocked and displayed in galleries and photo book boutiques. As with any creative art in the amateur or semi-pro sphere, the spectrum from mediocre to spectacular is wide, so have a flick through a zine before buying, or if online, review an artist’s work to make sure it’s for you.

Books

Many online bookstores allow one to avoid turning to Amazon, though in the case of the smaller stores waiting times can be long. A friend suggested Setanta as a great place to find new street photography books without having to spend hours trawling the internet. The website has a comprehensive street section and also boasts a collection of rare books and its own recommended list.

Same as it ever was, many useful and exciting photo books fall out of print and can only be found on the second-hand market. I’ve found affordable copies of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb’s Aperture publication On Street Photography and the Poetic Image, and Geoff Dyer’s The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand, for instance, on eBay.

One of the most significant street photography books of recent years has been Stephen McLaren’s collaboration with Matt Stuart. Their book, Reclaim the Street is a showcase of work by over 100 street photographers from around the world, both those well-known and others emerging. A major retrospective of Saul Leiter published in 2023 was also anticipated and has not disappointed. Since publishing this originally, there have been new books by Alex Webb, Richard Kalvar, Daidō Moriyama, and Phil Penman among others, and the Cafe Royal Books series has published several small collections of street photography from the 70s and 80s.

Books that I consider required reading for street photographers, such as Robert Frank’s The Americans, and Magnum’s Contact Sheets, also remain in print. More traditional educational fare such as Matt Stuart’s Think Like a Street Photographer, Moriyama’s How I Take Photographs, and Colin Westerbeck’s history of street photography, Bystander, also remain enduringly popular.

Film

Turning to film, the most notable series in years has been Josh Ethan Johnson’s superlative YouTube series, Wrong Side of the Lens which is now on to season 2. Season 1 features a wide range of street photographers including Jill Freedman, Daniel Arnold, Valerie J. Bower, and 16 others, and the series is a masterclass, in itself, of contemporary street photography.

It’s been 13 years since Cheryl Dunn premiered her documentary, Everybody Street, and the film doesn’t seem to be any less popular in street photography circles. Tim Huynh’s 2020 documentary Fill the Frame isn’t spoken of as fondly. It may not share quite the same impact as Johnson’s series, but is, nevertheless, an enjoyable watch. There are several documentaries of individual photographers I return to again and again. Elliott Erwitt’s Silence Sounds Good, the BBC’s 1980s Master Photographers series episode on André Kertész, and All Things Are Photographable, the excellent documentary on Garry Winogrand. Paul Sng’s film on Tish Murtha has received remarkable reviews and is full of inspiration and influence for contemporary street photographers. While not street photography, the arresting documentary on the work of James Nachtwey, War Photographer, is one I return to year after year.

Courses

Udemy, Skillshare, and a smattering of other MOOC platforms have Street Photography online courses to learn at your own pace, though I can vouch for Magnum’s excellent The Art of Street Photography as a thorough primer into the practice. Instructors include Richard Kalvar, Martin Parr, Bruce Gilden, and others. The videos are accompanied by a comprehensive workbook. For more intensive, in-person options, several universities and photography schools have foundational and intensive street photography courses. The International Center of Photography in New York, for instance, offers a well-regarded programme of street photography courses, both online and IRL.

Workshops and Mentorships

The world of practical street photography workshops is bustling and vibrant. A simple Google search takes one through many different workshop offerings from the reasonably priced Streetsnappers or Street Photography International, through more high-end offerings, to the frankly absurd in, for instance, Eric Kim’s 5-hour workshop for $3500. I am not comfortable commenting on or recommending workshops I have not participated in, but I can say that if you pay for that, you’ve more money than sense, especially since the self-proclaimed Bitcoin Billionaire evidently doesn’t need the money. With so many options there is bound to be a wide variance of quality. If spending some time in one of the myriad workshops available is of interest, then the advice is, of course, to 1st find one that offers the help that you need, then look for testimonials and reviews to confirm the money will be well spent. 

Mentorships have become more popular in recent years, and many of the street photographers offering small-group workshops also offer 1-on-1 mentorship opportunities. Again, I am reticent to recommend anyone in particular, having not undertaken the available mentorship programs. My advice for anyone considering this option is to research the photographer who will be the mentor. Read as much of their work as possible and assess how their mentorship may help or hinder your practice. From the photographer, ask for testimonials from previous, satisfied mentees. Before signing on the dotted line, as it were, have a discussion with the mentor, ideally meet, and understand in what form the mentorship will take. Often an instructor may offer some soft mentorship after a workshop or course has finished. This is at the discretion of the instructor, however, I have heard some positive results have come from such occasional, informal arrangements.

Masterclasses

Many workshops are led by talented, engaging and charismatic street photographers, however, there is one option that sits a step above and that is the street photography masterclass. Not always named as such, for our purposes here I consider a masterclass to be instruction, review, and/or practical coaching by a photographer in the top tier of street photography. It is in the form of a masterclass that I had the opportunity to spend time at Magnum in Paris with one of my favourite photographers, Richard Kalvar, and then later last year with the imposing figure of Bruce Gilden at Leica in London.

For different reasons, both experiences were pivotal in my growth as not only a street shooter but also an overall photographer. Masterclasses are available from a variety of sources, the aforementioned ICP, among other institutions. B&H and Adorama often offer masterclasses at various photography expos and conferences. Leica Akademie is a popular venue in locations around the world. Magnum also offers a collection of street photography-based masterclasses, not only in their London, Paris, and New York locations but in cities all across the globe. Additionally, Many high-level photographers will offer masterclasses through their website or smaller organisations. Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, for instance, offer a masterclass through La Luz Workshops, which comes highly recommended.

There is no shortage, then, of opportunity to step forward in street photography and make better work. From on-demand lessons through comprehensive, intensive courses, to masterclasses, there are myriad ways to learn and improve.

Technology

While some may argue the technology of street photography is the same as it ever was – a rangefinder, f/8 and be there – in reality the hardware and software that support our practice has seen dramatic change in recent times. Digital cameras see incremental improvement year after year with larger and more effective sensors, smartphones continue to add optics from traditional photographic powerhouses Hasselblad, and Leica; editing, processing, and filtering software add to the tools available in our digital darkroom; and of course, there is the looming spectre of AI.

Cameras

Though some photographers, Martin Parr and Richard Kalvar among others, make excellent use of D/SLRs, they are not considered conventional cameras for street photography, noisy and conspicuous as they are. Mirrorless cameras, absent the alerting slap of the mirror, are much better suited for the street. In the last couple of years, Leica has improved on the M10 and given the world the M11/11-P digital rangefinder while adding the M11 Monochrom and the Leica M EV1 (the 1st with an electronic viewfinder) to its range. More recently Leica have also added the M11-D, which comes without an LCD screen – though at that point, why not just buy a film camera.

Leica’s also upgraded to their most recent compact, the Leica Q3 with its Summilux 28mm lens. Ricoh improved on the GRIII, with the GRIIIx swapping the wider 18mm lens with a more street-friendly 28mm lens, and released the GR IV, improving the autofocus, stabilisation and image quality. The GR III and IIIx remain excellent choices, however, and many photographers continue to choose them. Fujifilm’s X100VI replaced the popular X100V, adding a higher-res sensor and stabilisation while keeping the rangefinder-style design that makes it a favourite for street shooters and it is certainly a more affordable option than the Leica. And speaking of the red dots, the German company has reintroduced the M6 analogue rangefinder to their product range, though the second-hand market is so vibrant with reliable film Ms, I recommend finding one pre-owned.

Software

Whether editing and processing RAW files from a camera or scans from film, there is plenty of software out there to make the job easier. My film workflow incorporates Silverfast 9 for scanning, Adobe Lightroom Classic for cataloguing, and Adobe Photoshop for everything else. For digital, I use Lightroom for both cataloguing and initial RAW processing before all contrast and other adjustments are done in Photoshop. I suspect this is similar to most readers.

Alternatives like GIMP and Capture ONE are also popular, but the latter seems more suited to serious portraiture. Luminar Neo is the new kid on the block and while I have not had the opportunity to use it, it has gathered some critical acclaim since its launch last year. Other software is useful, of course. I enjoy Alien Skin’s Exposure 7 suite of film emulations and use them often with my digital pictures. Topaz Labs have AI-powered tools that denoise, sharpen, or upscale photographs. My experiments with all 3 tools have been somewhat hit-and-miss, but this may be my deficiencies rather than those of the software.

AI

All this brings me around to the looming spectre of AI. The explosion of Artificial Intelligence across our lives in the last few years has been both a spectacle and a concern, and not only for it’s obscene effects on our environment, and the billions being wasted. For street photography, AI represents a material threat to the practice and its authenticity. The joy found in the practice comes from having the good fortune or anticipation to be there and make a picture of something striking and memorable.

The hunt for the photograph is an art form in and of itself. Can this feeling be found on the end of a blinking cursor? Then, of course, there is the issue of authenticity. Some images generated through prompts of software such as Midjourney, DALL-E, or Nano Banana are so photorealistic that they represent a material threat to what is real and trustworthy. With such improvements in generative AI, the very authenticity of street photography is at stake.

Public Perception and Ethical Considerations

In the 10-year gap between taking my last photo and returning to photography in the early days of the pandemic, I found that the climate of street photography had experienced a tangible shift. Learning the ropes in 2006/7, I felt little apprehension making photographs of the public on the streets of Glasgow, Paris, and Warsaw. In returning to, and concentrating on, street photography in 2020, I experienced more anxiety than I previously had. I attributed this to 20 years of ageing, to having more life experience and less impetuousness, and to several years of psychoanalysis in therapy. In short, I understood it to be something internal within me. I was rusty, I needed to shake off the apprehension while retaining the awareness and empathy. Over the 3 years since, I have found, however, that there has been an unmistakable change in the public perception and photographic practice of street photography.

With the explosion and subsequent fatigue of the use of social media, and the flagrant abuses of our data by the major social media companies, it is unsurprising that privacy has become a divisive issue for many. In the absence of agency against such abuse by corporations or surveillance by our governments, street photographers have become an easy target in this skirmish in the culture wars. In reality, the practice of street photography has always been found to walk a balance along the knife-edge of capturing authentic moments of life, often without permission or consent, while also portraying our subjects with dignity, respect, and empathy. It is our responsibility as street photographers to do so.

Privacy

The issue of privacy is a thorny one and we should be sensitive, though not subservient, to it. While I hold strongly that when in public one has a limited expectation of privacy, street photographers should be aware of the power dynamics at play. Just because we can photograph someone doing something, it does not mean that we should. In my classes, and in discussion, I often assert that each individual street photographer must draw their own ethical lines. I have mine and you will have yours.

On the Place de la République in Paris in 2022, a group of teenagers played a game of football. Jumpers, well… bin bags, for goalposts. As I photographed, one approached me and asked me to stop. I acquiesced but with the group’s permission, I continued to photograph without faces. Later, when considering why, Richard Kalvar pointed out that many of these teenagers may be illegal immigrants or refugees and thus prefer not to be photographed. Someone in our group suggested that with phone cameras, CCTV, and tourists, they were likely photographed hundreds of times that day. Someone else suggested the logical extreme that it is for them not to risk going out in public at all.

Here is where we need empathy. In my impetuous youth, I may have taken umbrage to the challenge. Save for the risk of being set upon by the group, I could have chosen to continue photographing in the bloody-minded indignance that it was my right to do so. Maturity and the development of my ethical lines inform how I chose to work.

Intention and Entitlement

My own photography often comes from a place of wry or ironic humour in the traditions of Winogrand, Erwitt, or the aforementioned Kalvar. Sharing the latter’s philosophy, it is never my intention to mock the subject of the photo but to make light of the curious situations we as people find ourselves in. It is, I admit, a subtle distinction but one that is nevertheless important. My photography, and the street photography that I love, is never cruel. There is no enjoyment in cruelty. I do not wish an audience that would find pleasure in such cruelty.

A couple of years ago, Anthony Morganti wrote an article questioning his love for street photography. In it, he referenced a Paulie B video in which Trevor Wisecup, in anticipation of making a photograph of someone, claimed to be about to ruin a person’s day. Wisecup has a reputation as being an enthusiastic, nice guy, his photos are great, and there is certainly a Gilden-esque bravado in front of Paulie B’s camera, however, I feel this schtick is indefensible and it casts other street photographers in a bad light. Gilden himself often warns other photographers from trying to do what he does. Last year, he told our class in London that if every street photographer was Bruce Gilden, there would be no street photography at all.

Much of the public’s recent consternation of street photography rails against this perceived entitlement and I suspect much of it comes from what they experience of Gilden-clones and other aggressive types out on the street as well as viral TikTok and YouTube videos. The overwhelming majority of candid street photographers are not so antagonistic or confrontational in their photography. Bravado or not, we should not relish the prospect of fucking up [someone’s] day. Again, I stress, that whether the photo is made or not comes down to where the photographer draws their ethical lines, however, if the choice to make the photograph is contentious then at the very least we must consider and own this.

Consent

The most surprising development in mindset from millennial street photographers to those of Gen-Z is the debate over permission and consent. a couple of years ago, I turned to Reddit in an attempt to find a community away from Meta and Twitter. What felt promising quickly became a disillusionment and I left as swiftly as I arrived. In one conversation about an unpleasant confrontation in street photography, I was surprised to see such animus directed at the photographer. He could have handled the confrontation better, it is safe to say, however, the issue was that he made the photo, at all, without permission or consent, being accused of abuse. In another conversation, inexplicably on the street photography subreddit no less, a photographer was accused of sexual assault for nothing more than photographing a woman on the street. Even accepting hyperbole this seemed somewhat beyond the pale.

An oft-repeated axiom in street photography is that it is better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission. Those who subscribe to this, myself included, posit that in seeking consent, the scene changes irrevocably and we kill the authenticity of the photograph we previsualised. Candid photography has been made in this way since the very first peopled photograph. Daguerre presumably did not scuttle down onto the Boulevard du Temple to ask the shoeblack’s consent. With exceptions, Cartier-Bresson, Winogrand, Meyerowitz, Moriyama, Webb, and the pantheon of street photography masters make their photographs without seeking permission.

It can nevertheless be argued that there are many things perfectly admissible in days gone by that are unacceptable today. Though we may conclude that candid photography is justifiable, it is something that we must nevertheless consider. Here, I believe the crucial question is of the photographer’s intention. Despite what social media may lead one to believe, most people don’t care one way or the other if their photograph is taken. They may be confused, bewildered, or even flattered, and sometimes they may be angry, but the overwhelming number will be ambivalent. If the photographer is honest and sincere in intention, often a simple smile can remove any form of altercation. No one’s day is ruined.

Conversation and debate over the ethics of street photography will continue and photographers from across the gamut of styles and philosophies will add their voices. Street photography has been said by some to have an image problem and while I do not believe the problem extends quite so far – social media has its silos and bubbles – it is notable that several well-respected voices have spoken out and voiced their unease with the conduct of some in our community. Generational divides suggest a fracturing of practice and for some a shift towards a more consent-driven form of street photography in the future and it will be interesting to see how this changes the aesthetic of the work created. However we choose to photograph, with permission or without, it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves ethically and with empathy towards those we photograph.

The Change in Urban Dynamics

Since Atget paced the streets of Paris documenting the development of Vieux Paris to the modern city we now recognise, street photographers have made pictures of great urban change. Compare the photographs of Bernice Abbott’s New York to those of Jill Freedman, to those of Mathias Wasik and a different city can be seen each time. As our major cities change, so does the street photography associated with them. As neighbourhoods are developed, and gentrified, they often become affordable only to the wealthy. Many transform to dull homogeneity. Where once, for example, small, locally owned businesses operated shopfronts, now a Starbucks is found on every corner.

The Death of the High Street

At the same time, the death of the high street has caused related concerns. In the last couple of years, I spent some time photographing on Oxford Street in London, and on Sauchiehall and Argyle Streets in Glasgow among other places. All famous, bustling centres of commerce, ripe for exciting street photography. And yet, when shop fronts weren’t boarded over, or covered with hoardings promising a future reopening, they were occupied with endless American Candy stores – rumoured to be fronts for organised crime, and branches of Poundland. Exaggeration, maybe, but hyperbole paints a picture. Our high streets and neighbourhoods are changing and as they transform, so does the street photography we make within them.

With the high street logos abandoning the shop fronts and moving into malls, they take their customers with them which causes a small but inarguable inconvenience for street photographers. These malls are privately-owned spaces and as such often have their own rules about photography within their walls. Street photographers still make photographs within malls, of course, but there is more risk at hand with mall security around each curve or corner.

Privacy (Again)

As we have touched upon, the issue of privacy continues to be a contentious issue in society, not only within the community of street photographers. Joris Lechêne is a social communicator, trainer, and social media activist who often speaks of the encroachment of private ownership onto public spaces and the loss to communities as a result. It is through much of Joris’ social media content that I have come to better understand issues such as privilege and decoloniality, however, it is his videos on private vs. public spaces that put these issues into sharp relief. Many public spaces that we once took for granted, and where we could make street photography without fear of confrontation, have been deemed private whether appropriate to do so or not.

In 2011, for a film made for the London Street Photography Festival, Hannah White sent 6 photographers out onto the streets of London to make photographs on public land and to do so as they would on any given day. The endeavour was to test the private and state policing of public and private space, and particularly highlight private security firms and their reactions to photographers. Stand Your Ground is an eye-opening film. All 6 photographers were stopped at least once and 3 encounters led to the police being summoned. In 12 years, this phenomenon, and the entitlement of these private security firms has only become more bold.

For many years, a movement of First Amendment Auditors has risen up in the US, and it has found its way to Britain. Similar to Hannah White’s movie, they test the bounds of the powers of policing public versus private spaces, however, one thing stands apart. While their cause is a righteous one, they often do more harm than good. Though there is no doubt the police or security overstep, almost all of the interactions or confrontations these self-appointed auditors share on social media are aggravated by their own poor behaviour or attitude. One more cynical than I would suggest they inflame the encounter for clicks. I suspect the situation for street photographers is made worse by this calculated confrontation.

The issue, however, remains. While there are legitimate heightened security considerations in light of forever wars and terrorism, private security will often overstep, simply because they can. As such, it is important to know the laws of the country and the bylaws of the city where one is photographing. In that way, one can be confident in discussions with private security, even in the face of police intervention. In Hannah White’s movie, in all cases when police were summoned, they sided with the photographers as they were careful to stick to public land.

One cannot argue that there has been a marked increase in the general public’s awareness of issues of privacy in the last 10 years. People feel burned by the overbearing surveillance culture, of CCTV cameras on every corner, facial recognition software, of police videoing the faces of participants of protests, and tech corporations’ flagrant abuses of our data generated on their platforms. Though regrettable, it is at least understandable that individuals may take their frustrations out on the jobbing street photographer that they are unable to do so against their state or big tech. We may feel aggrieved by this misplaced opprobrium, but we should sympathise with it, and we may need to come to accept it as part of the risk taken when making our photographs.

Crowded Metropolis

As our world has recovered from the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, the centres of metropolis, be they London, New York, or Paris, have again become increasingly crowded. Heavier streams of people provide cover for the candid street photographer to blend in, though it becomes more difficult to isolate a subject, with a high danger of clutter. Equally, however, this provides more opportunities to layer and organise the chaos into a dynamic, energetic rectangle.

Despite the aforementioned death of the high street, these centres of commerce still bustle with activity. Each visit when I return to Glasgow, I am astonished by the apparent battalions of street performers and buskers around every corner. Gone are the days of bucket drummers and crusty bearded fellas with acoustic guitars. Peppering city centres now seem to be endless factory-produced karaoke singers aping Lewis Capaldi along to an iPhone with a Bluetooth connection. Such boring photography.

Hovering around these performers is the public that they hope may scan the QR code emblazoned in front of them. What do these punters hold in their hands? The ubiquitous smartphone, of course. I appreciate that here, I may be a curmudgeon, however, one can’t walk down a city street without seeing a gallery of shop doorways populated by people checking their phones. Like street performers, the public distracted by smartphones is low-hanging fruit for street photography. Such photos are easy and with rare exceptions are almost always dull. In the opinion of one 40-something Scotsman, at least, pictures of Joe Public gazing into the black mirror are to be avoided, which is difficult given the ubiquity of the mobile device.

Representation and Othering

Despite what right-wing populists might proclaim, our cities are not full up. Whether immigrant communities have existed for generations, or they are a result of refugee crises triggered by recent wars or the climate emergency; that multiculturalism is a net gain to our society is inarguable, and it’s not even close. Steering away from the politics, lest this essay become polemic, I will concentrate only on the photography.

Our collective view of life in our towns and cities benefits from a wide range of cultural perspectives, especially as those in the future look back on our photographs as historical record. How this white, middle-class, straight 40-something experiences life in the public space will be different to the point of view of, hypothetically, a 25-year-old, queer, Syrian refugee. A wide diversity of views and stories benefits street photography, and society as a whole.

When we photograph, with our specific point of view, we do so either by making photographs of subjects just like us, or people distinct from us. Such differences may be societal, cultural, generational, racial, ethnic, sexual, or economic, among others and so we are far more likely to photograph difference than homogeneity. These differences can be experienced as near to us as a metro stop or 2, or as far as a trip across the world. In meeting these differences we must at least be aware of them, any implicit bias they may inject into our work, stereotypes we may reinforce, and how we portray those in front of our lens.

A few years ago, Magnum ran a fascinating Professional Practices course on the topic of working with NGOs. Alongside Representatives of several organisations, Jess Crombie, a consultant who works with NGOs to explore ethical complexities in their storytelling, spoke to the class about representation and the concept of othering. Jess co-authored The People in the Pictures for Save the Children, and was instrumental in writing ethical guidelines for the collection and use of content. While these sessions, lectures, and conversations were not focused on street photography, they have strengthened and informed my understanding of representation since.

When we photograph those of other ethnicities, economic conditions, or gender identities, whether in our neighbourhoods, or in far-off foreign countries, there is a stronger expectation today to avoid exoticising them and to avoid seeing the subject as the other. It is argued that to do so is to look upon them with inherent inequality and thus project our biases and stereotypes onto them, whether intentional or not.

This is not to say we cannot make street photography of those different to ourselves, nor to second-guess an opportunity for a photograph in the moment, but it is to encourage readers to think more of cultural sensitivities, customs and etiquette. We should be aware of the choices we make and think critically about our work and the effect it may have on those in front of our lens.

The art world section that closed the original 2024 version of this article has been removed as it was excessively out of date.

Thank you for reading the inaugural State of Street Photography essay. I am sure that across so many different subjects, I have neglected to mention or cover some angles. I hope to cover more in the future.

So, what did I miss? Are there other topics I should discuss next time? Let me know in the comments.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post The State of Street Photography 2026 appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

Hi,

I last wrote to you in July when I got to premiere a wee film my friend made of me cutting about Warsaw, making photos. Since then – nothing. Writing plainly, it has been a fecund year of photography, but an unmistakable disillusionment with this platform had been taking root.

My intention, such as it is, remains to return to writing to you in 2026, whether here or on another platform. I have much still to say, and a lot of work to show, and though the road to hell is paved with such good intentions, hopefully you’ll stay with me to see what happens.

For this first letter in a while, and the final of 2025, I thought I might pull a photograph from the stacks of each month and write a few words. Then that’ll be it. Off we head towards Hogmanay, the bells, and the cautious promise of a new year.

January

January began with a trip home to Scotland to photograph Mogwai’s album launch show for The Bad Fire at Glasgow’s QMU. I had the pleasure of the company of my brother, and my teenage best pal, Iain, at the show.

On this flying visit, I got to hang out with Neil Scott, his wife, and a couple of other Substackers. Earlier that month, back in the cold air of Warsaw, I continued to document the Polish pro-Palestine movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza (see above).

February

A short trip to Scotland on my own the previous month was followed fairly swiftly by a lovely trip with Marta to Nice. Anything to avoid the Varsovian freeze, it seemed. Otherwise, February was a quiet month, though surprisingly, my diary reminds me I photographed the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk with the Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and separately photographed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. None of that, though, was as fun as photographing Franz Ferdinand at Progresja.

March

On the other hand, March was a riot. Not only did my beloved Newcastle United win the Carabao Cup, but I travelled over to London to photograph the Geordie invasion of the capital. Though I didn’t get to the match itself, I spent time in Covent Garden with the fans, then on to Wembley Way for the build-up. Afterwards, I headed to a Supporters’ Trust event at a sports bar to watch the match, and after we won (we won!!!), made a beeline back to Wembley for the fans leaving the stadium. What a birthday present the Magpies gave me! Two weeks later, I was back in the UK, this time with my dad and brother in Newcastle itself for the open-top bus parade celebrations. Incredible. Imagine no liking football!

Such havoc was March that I almost forgot to mention that Marta and I adopted a beautiful, if perpetually terrified, notweiller, Lotka. I fell in love instantly.

April

Marta and I got away again this month, though this time we took the newest member of our wee family to the Polish countryside so she could run around a bit. We were lucky to get some sun. Otherwise, April was spent mostly on the streets, a little bit of agency work, and a little bit of street photography. Calm before the comparative oncoming storm of summer.

May

As Spring came to an end, Poland woke up. There was a Labour Day march, a Constitution Day run and parade, Ostatnie Pokolenie (the Climate Action group) began a month of protests and actions, and a savage murder was inflicted on a member of staff at Warsaw University. A lot of work, and that was before the first round of the Polish presidential election which I missed when I traveled to Scotland for a long weekend to photograph Mogwai at the Glasgow Barrowland. After a brilliant time at home where I got to take my nieces to a SWPL match, I was brought back to earth with a crash when I joined a poignant and at times furious protest at the Israeli embassy in Warsaw, and then suffered a brutal bout of COVID.

June

This month saw the victory of former football hooligan Karol Nawrocki in the second round of the Polish presidential election. Much of the month was spent with disputes of the result but mid-month it was confirmed. It was around then that my friend Jaap and I sat down in his back garden to record an interview about street photography. Later, he joined me at the Corpus Christi parade in Warsaw’s old town to take B-roll for the interview. The B-roll turned into a film itself so the interview was put on the backburner. Hopefully, it’ll see the light of day early next year.

There was a lot going on in June. The now traditional Parade of the Mermaids, Warsaw Pride, the second annual Palestine Solidarity Days, but it was the speaking tour visit of Dr. Gabor Maté that became the highlight of the month.

July

Midsummer gave way to a fractious month, awaiting Nawrocki’s inauguration in August. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations were organised. On the 19th, a large gathering of far-right football hooligans assembled in the centre of the city, with a smaller counterprotest of antifascist activists gathered 300 metres away. That the police allowed this was demented. It was the only time this year work got violent, with one particular wall-puncher taking exception to being photographed. His admittedly lacklustre grabbing and twisting of my arm found its way onto the national TV news. Pure riddy! Later that same afternoon, the fascist element broke across towards the antifascist group and began throwing bottles. Several were injured, but thankfully no-one seriously hurt. It was, though, a worrying indication of the emboldening of the far-right after their presidential election victory.

August

The inauguration came and went without any great trouble, though it was a long, hot day of photographing. The day before, I’d been tipped the wink that Pro-Palestine protesters were going to block the road outside the Chancellery of the Prime Minister (see above). On the 10th, I photographed the early-morning rehearsal for the Armed Forces Day parade but was unable to work the parade itself as the ‘rona struck. Again! Two weeks out of the game and back just in time to enjoy the last week of summer, albeit with a cough driving everyone bananas. The summer ended with an odious anti-immigration march, a riverside promo shoot for a Polish industrial rave band, and an action-packed dog frisbee contest where I lost my glasses!

September

And then the drones came. It’s a surreal experience to be woken by Marta with the news that Russian drones were flying over Poland, airports were closed, and an air response had been launched. A few days later, we got reports of a downed drone found near Warsaw, so several colleagues and I got in the car and headed over to find the recovery effort. Other than this, my diary tells me September wasn’t much more than some corporate gigs, a few protests, oh and photographing Kneecap in Warsaw!

October

The month opened with an emotional protest outside the Israeli embassy marking the 2nd year of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, then Marta and I took Lottie away for a few days in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains. We returned in time for me to step straight back into international news with the return of the Polish delegates of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Far-right and antifascist groups continued to organise demonstrations and counter-protests. The month ended with some whimsy, photographing the Polish qualifiers of the Quidditch World Cup, a co-ed, LGBTQ+ friendly sport which I found to my delight had not long ago been renamed Quadball to end any connection to the Queen TERF.

November

If I thought Newcastle’s Carabao Cup win was to be the footballing highlight of the year for me, I was very much mistaken. After failing to beat Greece, the final match of the World Cup qualifiers with Denmark was a cup final. Win and Scotland qualify. Lose and we head to the play-offs. Going into the match, I was not confident, and then this happened. Our first World Cup qualification since I was in my teens. For two days solid, I did no work whatsoever, choosing instead to watch every possible moment of celebration on social media. I’ve still got goosebumps thinking about it. So much more happened in November: Protests, demonstrations, Poland’s Independence Day march, the first snow of the year, and Luvcat’s tour photographer being a detestable fud, but nothing worth mentioning more than Scotland are going to the World Cup!

In December, Ross MacDonald’s superlative photograph of Scott McTominay’s athletic opening goal against Denmark was framed and unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland. Spoilers – when home at Christmas, I popped along to see it. Brilliant.

December

Finally, we make our way through December. The thrust of this month was photographing the WATCH DOCS Human Rights Film Festival. To be a little part of this team with Marta each year is a pleasure.

Elsewhere, we lost Martin Parr which was a real gut punch though an excuse, while none were needed, to revist a lot of his work. Warsaw opened a busy new Christmas market outside the Palace of Culture and Science so a lot of work was done there as well as photographing the turning on of the city’s Christmas lights in the old town. For Christmas itself, I travelled home for some Milton family shenanigans.

I popped up the road to Glasgow and Edinburgh for some street photography and Christmas shopping, but largely I spent the week at home in Airdrie eating Scotch pies and drinking Irn-Bru.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Hi Chaos: Looking Back at 2025 appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

In a previous life as a musician and underachieving record label owner, I was lucky enough to do some memorable things. Radio, TV, and TEDxWarsaw appearances were all experiences worth writing home about, as they say. Nevertheless, whenever such things were recorded, something would inevitably go wrong.

On The Frozen North’s hilarious appearance on popular Polish morning TV show Pytanie na Śniadanie, our 4 minutes of fame were beset with technical issues. We understood we were invited to discuss our new record and perform. They seemed to want to discuss the intriguing cross-cultural make-up of our band (4 Poles, an Irishman, and a Scot). We inevitably did neither to any great degree, and ended up performing less than 2 minutes of an 8-minute song, before cutting to an ad for a popular probiotic. Terrible – so much so that I turned it into a tight-five stand-up bit to amuse my photography school students.

A half-decade later, TEDxWarsaw, an organisation I had belonged to for most of my time in Poland, was celebrating its 10th anniversary with the original team’s final event. Pop-up Books, a band I had formed not long before a global pandemic put an end to it, was chosen to perform. As a warm-up, we had played only one previous gig a few nights before, so this was our first real show, and it’s fair to say our performance on the TEDx stage wasn’t our best, suffering as we were with an attack of the jitters.

Nevertheless, the standard TEDx recording of the set would be useful to push us on and give us a lovely document of the performance, right? Nope. For TEDxWarsaw 10, it seems the team had hired a 10-year-old to run the sound desk. At times, the audio fades, at others it disappears. There’s errant feedback, weird delays. The whole thing is a disappointing mess. This might be the 1st time I’ve shared it widely in almost 6 years. Still, at least we look pretty cool!

So, you can see why I might be a little wary of finding myself in front of the camera, setting myself up for some ego-failing, vanity-pricking disappointment. It was for this reason, then, that when my friend and colleague Jaap Arriens asked if I’d like to work with him on a film about my street photography for his YouTube channel, I was desperate to emerge from the adventure with something I could be happy to share far and wide without shrivelling up inside with acute embarrassment.

And wouldn’t you know, we managed it. Jaap’s film follows me through the afternoon of the 19th June this year at the Corpus Christi parade from St. John’s Archcathedral in Warsaw through to the Piłsudski Square. I work, we chat, and you can see some of the photos made that day. I hope you will have a look and enjoy it. It was a lot of fun making it with Jaap.

Afterword: Some Scattered Thoughts

The film began as b-roll to garnish an interview on street photography that I filmed with Jaap in his back garden. Throughout the afternoon, I think he began to see the possibility of a second film that would precede the interview, and by the end of the day, it was clear this fly-on-the-wall doc would come first and in a month or so, the interview will appear.

Using a Leica and wide-angle lenses, I get pretty close to my subjects, which has trained me to have a sixth sense to do all that I can to stay out of other photographers’ viewfinders lest I ruin their shot. It was an unusual feeling, then, to be filmed as I was photographing. I had to repeatedly fight the urge to escape Jaap’s lens.

Given my inherent shyness, it was an eye-opening experience to watch the footage back and see the confidence with which I move around in the crowd. It reminded me of the afternoon in Paris when, for 30 minutes and from some distance, I watched Richard Kalvar work on the Place de la République. For street photographers, I think there is certainly a benefit to seeing the way in which others work. No doubt, many of us have taken a lot from this famous short video of Winogrand. I certainly have.

It is also interesting to see the reactions, or – for the most part – lack thereof, of the people I was photographing. As I passed, Jaap followed behind me, and you can see very few people even acknowledge that I was there. One of the big anxieties many new street photographers have is that they are intruding or may be angrily confronted, and here you can see that fear is largely unfounded.

In all, I’m delighted with the result of the film, and I can’t thank Jaap enough for suggesting we collaborate. Certainly, it’s very useful for giving my ego a wee tickle, though when Marta sees me watching it – again – she punctures any hint of pomposity by referencing this moment of animated genius.

The reason I wanted to make it, though, is much the same as for this newsletter, my website, my teaching and my mentoring, all in the hope that it may be useful for other street photographers out there, or those wanting to give it a try.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post My Life As A Thief appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

Photos, mostly comes to you a week early this October, and at the expense of my usual havering on street photography. Instead, this month, we begin the 1st of an occasional series of interviews, Conversations, mostly.

My 1st conversation for the series is, appropriately enough, with the 1st photography writer on Substack, the Amsterdam-based photographer and curator, Wesley Verhoeve. Wesley’s excellent newsletter, Process, is a must-read from an insightful, thoughtful photographer. 13,000 readers can’t be wrong, after all! 

Wesley’s photography has been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Washington Post, Wired, New York Magazine, Volkskrant, and many others. He is the founding curator of the Projected series at the International Center of Photography in New York, and currently curates Process Projected, a bi-monthly exhibition series at the WIHH Gallery in Amsterdam.

Wesley’s first monograph, NOTICE, was published by New Style Publishing in 2021 and is now in its second printing. This November, he will publish NOTICE Journal Volume One, and he and I had a chat about this new book which began its presale on Sunday 20th October.

You can read more about the different editions, the early-bird pricing, and how to order the book over on Process. Without any further ado, here is my conversation with Wesley. Enjoy.

Neil Milton: NOTICE Journal, Volume One revisits Amsterdam over three consecutive springs. Given the season’s inherent association with rebirth and growth, how did your own personal transformations over this time influence the project and the photographs that you made?

Wesley Verhoeve: Over those three springs, I went through some major changes in my life, following a move from one continent to another. I think we all have experienced challenging periods in which we struggle with change of one kind or another, whether it’s in our professional, romantic, or family life. This project became a way for me to process my feelings and those changes. Spring, with its relationship with rebirth and new beginnings, mirrored what I was going through. As I photographed Amsterdam in this season of renewal, I found myself healing and reconnecting with parts of myself I had lost along the way.

NM: The title of the book follows from your 1st monograph, published in 2021. How do you feel the book follows from where NOTICE left off? Do you see it as an explicit successor or more of a spiritual follow-up?

WV: It’s definitely more of a spiritual follow-up than a direct sequel. NOTICE was where photography became meditation for me, a way to slow down and truly see all that I usually would rush right past. This was a forced stillness due to the pandemic in what was, to me, a brand new place: the suburbs of Vancouver. 

This new book, while rooted in a different city and time, in a way follows that same thread of using photography as a way to navigate personal change, but now making art went beyond meditation and into a form of therapy. Both books explore overlooked beauty, but NOTICE Journal delves deeper into themes of rebirth and transformation. It’s less about capturing a place in a specific moment and more about how that place interacts with the changes happening within me.

NM: It’s evident there’s a therapeutic aspect to the book and from the diptychs I have seen, it passes from photographer to viewer. The diptychs were made with a half-frame camera dating from 1964, how did you come about it, and why was this the tool you decided to work with as you made the photographs for the project?

WV: I came across the Pen-F when my friend Guy told me I should borrow his sometime, and it immediately intrigued me. It’s a unique tool because it shoots two images per frame, which means you’re not just thinking about individual photos—you’re thinking in pairs, almost like a conversation between two images. That format was perfect for this project because I wanted to tell stories through contrasts and connections. The camera forced me to be more thoughtful about how the images would work together and how they could reflect the themes of duality and transformation.

NM: You talk of storytelling through connection, contrast, and figurative conversation. Naturally, similarities can be drawn to cinema. I was struck by the tonal quality of the photographs and read that the film used was the black-and-white film favoured by Spielberg and Scorsese. Clearly, this was a deliberate decision. Do you see parallels between your photographic diptychs and wider cinematic storytelling?

WV: Yes, Double-X 5222 was the film I used, and it’s definitely got a cinematic feel to it, with its rich contrasts and depth. The idea of pairing images in diptychs does have parallels to cinematic storytelling in that each pair of photos works almost like a scene. They create a dialogue, a push and pull between light and shadow, stillness and movement, or different emotions. In a way, it’s like editing a film—choosing which moments to place side-by-side to evoke a feeling or suggest a narrative arc.

NM: These diptychs, these pairs of photographs, reveal overlooked or unnoticed corners of Amsterdam. What was your process in deciding where to explore and when?

WV: It was a mix of intentional wandering and spontaneous discovery. I didn’t set out with a strict plan, but rather allowed myself to drift through the city, especially both neighborhoods I lived in over those three years, and let moments reveal themselves to me. Often, I found the most overlooked spots by walking at odd hours, when the light hit the city in interesting ways or when places were quieter. I wasn’t looking for traditional beauty—sometimes it was the texture of a wall, the pattern of shadows cast by a tree, or the way a reflection distorted a familiar scene. It was about letting go of expectations and being open to seeing something new in the ordinary.

NM: Being open to the unexpected every day that we step out the door is something I feel you and I share in our photography. I go back to Glasgow every year and find that I see it, and photograph it, differently each time. Did that cyclical nature of viewing Amsterdam in different springs show you the city in different ways? Were there moments when the city revealed something new and entirely unexpected?

WV: Absolutely. The cyclical nature of returning to the same places in different springs gave me a deeper understanding of how time and light shape the city. Each spring felt like a new chapter, even though the settings were often the same. Some streets or parks that seemed mundane one year would reveal something striking the next—maybe it was the way the light had shifted, or maybe I had changed in a way that allowed me to see them differently. There were definitely moments when the city surprised me, showing me a detail or a mood I hadn’t noticed before. And again, it was mostly about what was going on inside of me, and the city allowed me to see echoes of those emotions in its spaces.

NM: You mentioned earlier that the diptychs are an interplay of light and shadow, but I also note reflection. The most striking aspect of the collection, though, is the often abstract use of line and geometry. For instance, in one diptych, you pair strong ladder-like lines with long arcing curves. Can you speak to some of the choices you made?

WV: Geometry and abstraction became key elements in how I approached the diptychs. I was drawn to the idea of using lines and shapes to create a visual rhythm, something that feels both structured and organic. The ladder-like lines paired with the curved arcs in that diptych were about contrast and balance. I wanted to juxtapose rigid, almost architectural forms with something more fluid and natural. It’s a visual metaphor for the tension between control and letting go, which is something I was experiencing personally while working on this project.

NM: Yes, it was certainly one of the pairs that had the biggest impact on me as I looked through the photographs. That juxtaposition of the unyielding lines against the pliant curves was artfully done. The diptych format follows naturally from using the half-frame camera, but how did the format shape your perceived narrative and emotional rhythm of the project both when making the photographs and then when sequencing for the book?

WV: The diptych format really did dictate how the project unfolded. When making the photographs, I was not always thinking about pairs, but when I was, I thought about how two images could speak to each other, either through contrast or harmony. It created a sense of rhythm in the way I shot, almost like a call-and-response. Other times, I would find my flow state and just shoot, discovering the pairing once my scans came in. When sequencing for the book, that rhythm became even more important. The diptychs allowed me to play with pacing and mood—some pairs are quiet and meditative, while others are more energetic or dissonant. It helped create an emotional journey for the viewer, much like how scenes in a film build tension or resolve.

NM: Finally, turning to the volume itself. The importance placed on the experience of nostalgia within the book is evident. You’ve included an essay, and singularly, a recipe, to accompany the film photographs. This is all bound in retro typography by Maxwell George. It’s a visually striking cover. How do you imagine the interplay between the text, writing, design, and photography for the reader?

WV: I wanted the book to feel like more than just a collection of images—it’s an experience that draws on multiple senses and emotions. The essay by Caroline Cala Donofrio and the recipe by Hetty McKinnon both tap into themes of nostalgia and rebirth, and they offer a different layer of storytelling that complements the photographs. The typography by Maxwell George is heavily inspired by the Amsterdam school of design (1910-1930) and adds a retro, timeless feel that ties everything together. For me, the interplay between the text, design, and images is about creating a cohesive narrative where each element enhances the others, giving the reader something to feel, think about, and in the case of the recipe even taste.

And finally…

Thanks to Wesley for our conversation, and good luck to him on the release of the book. 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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Conversations, mostly 01: A Conversation with Wesley Verhoeve appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

It is almost unthinkable now that there was a time when photography was available only to those with expertise. Early photographers needed knowledge of physics, chemistry, and art history to even begin making, developing, and printing photographs. One also had to have the means so for some time this expensive, dangerous pursuit of photography was the walled playground of the wealthy. The original Wet Plate process that required photographers to coat, expose, and process the plate in one sitting often confined the expert photographer to a studio. The later invention of the more practical Dry Plate process allowed photographers to coat the plate, let it dry and expose it at a different time or place.

In the 1880s, George Eastman, a bank teller from Rochester, NY, began a flirtation with photography as he hoped to document an approaching vacation. In his experimentations with Richard Maddox’s Dry Plate process, he found he could substitute the glass plate with paper. Rather more flexible than glass, paper could be spooled behind the shutter, and thus was born the roll of film. Eastman later founded the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company and began selling his patented rolls of dry-coated photographic film to photographers. History has left us no indication of whether he enjoyed his holiday.

The Democratization of Photography

A born entrepreneur, George Eastman’s vision was to make photography accessible to the masses. In 1888, he produced a simple box camera, The Kodak. Named for a word devised when playing word games one evening with his mother, Eastman believed the unique name with the strong K would be memorable. He was not wrong.

With some flair for advertising, Eastman sold The Kodak with the memorable slogan, You press the button, we do the rest. The camera came pre-loaded with a roll of paper film 100 exposures long. It had fixed focus and no viewfinder and was by definition, if not by name, a point-and-shoot. Using the camera required no expertise, and users no longer had to concern themselves with messy chemistry. Once they had exposed the film, they shipped the camera back to Rochester for processing and printing. Kodak returned the prints with the camera and installed a new roll of film, ready for another 100 button presses.

With such simplicity, the Kodak was a great success. For the first time, photography was available to millions of casual enthusiasts. The process was customer-friendly, easy, and uncomplicated, and it sparked a revolution.

The Kodak Revolution

Free from the constraints of the studio and any need for scientific understanding, the Kodak excited a national craze for snapshot photography. Believed to have been coined by Sir John Herschel in the mid-19th century, the term was stolen, as much of the predatory language of photography had been, from hunting. A snapshot, whether through barrel or lens, is a quick shot made without careful aim. With the absence of a viewfinder, the Kodak was very much a snapshot camera. Unencumbered by the need, or capacity, for careful composition the snapshooter discovered by way of experiments and happy accidents a new photographic vocabulary. As cameras were carried in one’s daily life, gone were the still, staid, sober portraits of the salon, and here to stay arrived the kinetic enjoyment of life in the world and a procession of subjects encouraged to smile.

People founded clubs and published magazines, allowing these Kodak Fiends to share their love for the new fad of photography. Just a decade after Kodak introduced the camera, manufacturers were producing more than one and a half million roll-film cameras, and photographers were making millions of photographs every year, complete with their imperfect framing and spontaneous composition. Middle-class consumers all across America and the Western world were indulging in this new-found hobby. The snapshot became so ubiquitous that the photo-mad Princess Alexandra snapped Queen Victoria, and Jonathan Harker, the protagonist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, even used a Kodak in the story.

Near Ubiquity

The vast impact that this mass adoption of photography had on the world was plain to see. Within only a few years, photography had gone from a highly specialised practice to near-ubiquity. Grandparents and children alike made photographs of their families and lives. Such was the youthful enthusiasm for photography, that Kodak’s next camera, launched in 1900, was advertised for children. The Brownie was sold at a reduced price, costing only $1. Processing cost only 40c and to have the camera returned, and reloaded with film, only a further 15c. Now, photography had escaped the domain of the middle class and was available to all but the poorest of families.

Jacques Henri Lartigue and the Snapshot Aesthetic

Born to a wealthy family, Jacques Henri Lartigue had the opportunity to begin making photographs as a young boy of just 7. Though now considered a master of 20th-century photography, then he was an enthusiastic, gifted amateur making photographs of his life as a playful, fun-loving boy. As a demonstration of the keen culture of amateurism that fostered his photography, Lartigue soaked up many different styles. Biographer, Kevin Moore, said of Lartigue that he understood how to capture the essence of a moment, playing and experimenting with his snapshots.

Lartigue’s photographs overflow with energy and movement. Set beside the pictorialist masterpieces of the time, the difference is stark. The contemporary pastoral photographs of the pictorialists seem frozen in time, whereas Lartigue’s snapshots seize the motion of leaping relatives, racing motor cars, and mischievous pets and spill with joyful, playful exuberance.

When the photographic world discovered Lartigue’s boyhood photographs almost 50 years later, it recognised him as a prototypical predecessor of many of today’s master street photographers. His photography typified the cultural shift from the posed photographs of fine art photography of the time to the candid, kinetic moments that he captured.

The Vernacular

Though the Photo-Secession and The Linked Ring pushed photography towards the art world with great success, the explosion of amateur photography uncoupled what John Szarkowski later referred to as functional photography from fine art and offered photographers a different path. Vernacular photography, the term used to contrast many other manners of the use of photographs from that of fine art, may include journalistic, commercial, scientific, medical, forensic, clerical, administrative, or even, as Susan Sontag describes them in her essay, In Plato’s Cave, snapshots as souvenirs of daily life.

As engineers turned small, handheld amateur cameras into professional models—for instance, the Leica introduced by the Leitz Wetzlar company in 1924—amateur photography led the way to a professional use of the vernacular. Photographers began to document wars, photojournalists recorded newsworthy events, and police photographers captured evidence of crime scenes. Photographers made portraits for official documents, police took mugshots to identify criminals, and doctors exposed X-rays to identify broken bones. As Sontag continued in In Plato’s Cave, to collect photographs is to collect the world, and among all of this, prototypical street photographers such as Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and André Kertész did just that.

la Classe de Danse

Artists were contemptuous of the vernacular though its influence began to seep through. The painter Edgar Degas adopted the fragmentation of the photographic frame. In his 1874 painting, La Classe de Danse, he shows signs that his art was finding influence in photography. The teacher leaning on his cane, the girl scratching her back in a contorted pose, and the frame cutting off elements are all details that viewers would not have expected in an oil painting before the advent of photography. Later, Cartier-Bresson would find influence in the open form of Degas’ paintings that would further inform his photographic compositions.

Vernacular photographers, whether amateur or professional, cultivated a strong aesthetic that has persisted and cemented itself in practice through the years. Though much vernacular was considered vulgar by fine art photographers, it had a regenerative effect on the practice. Like the novel replacing the epic poem, the vernacular succeeded pictorialism in what the Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky termed rebarbarization; a perceived vulgarity replacing a played-out art form. This alternative to art evolved and grew into the social documentary, photojournalism, and street photography that exists to this day.

The Rise of Street Photography

The visual language of street photography has evolved over many years and can trace its lineage not from the staged formality of the photographic studio or the fine art traditions of the pictorialists, but from the spontaneous and candid nature of the vernacular, particularly the snapshot craze. Like the snapshot, street photography often eschews the strict conventions of composition and incorporates the informal aspects of the vernacular. Strong street photography captured within the walls of a 35mm frame, whether mundane or brimming with interest, or whether anticipated or instinctual, makes a picture that echoes the energy and immediacy of the snapshot.

While photographing for Roy Stryker’s Farm Security Administration, Walker Evans began to reassess the vernacular of snapshots and picture postcard photographs, noticing that mundane objects, scenes, and moments were often centred. He developed what he called the American vernacular and travelled the country making photographs that highlight the symbols and icons that defined the culture. Collected together, a number of these photographs became his acclaimed 1938 exhibition and book, American Photographs, a collection that was to have a profound effect on several street photographers who were to come after and cite Evans as a major influence.

Drunken Horizons

One photographer who befriended Evans in the 1950s was the Swiss-born New Yorker, Robert Frank. In 1955, with the recommendation of Evans, Frank received a Guggenheim grant to travel across America and make photographs, a project that would spawn his seminal book, The Americans. Frank’s photography in the 1950s took significant influence from Evans and from the vernacular tradition from which he emerged. His photographs channelled the raw, candid authenticity of snapshot photography to lay bare the stark contradictions of American society at a time of great change. His photographs were so unflinching and erratic, with their meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness, that critics heavily criticised him at the time; today, however, critics regard his work as highly influential, especially among fellow New Yorker Garry Winogrand.

The photography of Garry Winogrand borrows heavily from the candid aesthetic of the vernacular. Citing both Evans and Frank as instrumental in the development of his own style, his photography follows in the lineage of the snapshot. Watching Winogrand work, you might think he made photographs without taking time to compose through the viewfinder; in fact, he composed as the viewfinder travelled towards his eye and often tripped the shutter on arrival. He characterised his photography by a relentless pursuit of the street’s nervous energy – an energy he shared. In his best pictures, Winogrand elevated the everyday moments found in the vernacular to breathtaking, profound visual statements and while he would claim a picture can’t tell a story, the evidence of his work would seek to contradict him.

Legacy

Pictorialist Henry Peach Robinson once posed that the carefree snapshots of the Kodak revolution made photography almost a frivolous pursuit, and [caused] it to be included with amusements and recreations. To the pictorialists, snapshots were uncontrolled and unskilled. Art, this was not. In his elective classes at the University of Texas, however, street photographer Garry Winogrand would often assert that all things are photographable. One needs only to find the right answer to the question raised by the subject to make it a picture.

The snapshot aesthetic of the vernacular, with its lax adherence to composition, convention, and the po-faced solemnity of 19th-century artistic photography, opened the door to experimentation, play. Photographers working today, from Meyerowitz to Moriyama, owe the evolution of street photography, with its emphasis on the candid and the unposed, to the explosion of the vernacular brought about by the Kodak Revolution. There is an evident path tread from the circular snapshots of the early Kodak fiends through to the iconic 35mm works of the street photography masters. Its democratisation achieved by the marketing vision of George Eastman allowed photography to bifurcate into fine art and the vernacular. In street photography, the vernacular is elevated to an art form itself, that continues to captivate and inspire to this day.

Selected sources used for this essay include:

The BBC series The Genius of Photography (2007) and its accompanying book by Gerry Badger, Photography: A Cultural History (2002) by Mary Warner Marien, and On Photography (1977) by Susan Sontag.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Photos, Mostly 14: You Press The Button, We Do The Rest appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

It would be fair to say that Charles Baudelaire had complex feelings on the matter of photography. Despite finding himself in front of Nadar’s lens on several occasions, the great French poet and critic of modern art, writing on the cusp of romanticism and modernism, proclaimed that the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies. In his essay On Photography, published in 1859, he was critical of its mechanical nature and contemptuous of its ubiquity, decrying a mad­ness, an extraordinary fanaticism [that] took possession of all these new sun-worshippers. His biggest criticism, however, was for the medium’s precision. Such mechanical reproduction could not possibly be considered art.

Painter of Modern Life

A year later, in his acclaimed essay, The Painter of Modern Life, Baudelaire wrote further on the aesthetics of modernity and adopted an obscure journalist and illustrator reporting for the Illustrated London News as the personification of modern, visual art. Cast as the unnamed bohemian hero Monsieur G., for he humbly refused to be named, Constantin Guys had spent many years travelling the world as a reporter, and as a correspondent during the Crimean War. Baudelaire describes Monsieur G. in glowing, admiring terms and sets him as a flâneur, a wanderer, whose mainspring of his genius is curiosity. He is a passionate observer of the world, someone trained to study the world around him and distil it down to the wine of life.

The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the birds, and the water the fishes. His passion, and profession, is to espouse the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate observer, it is an immense joy to take up one’s dwelling among the multitude, amidst undulation, movement, the fugitive, the infinite.

– Charles Baudelaire. The Painter of Modern Life (1863).

It is this enigmatic portrayal of the flâneur that has been romanticised and passed down from 19th-century French life to today: The curious, aesthetically attuned and attentive spectator wandering amongst, though detached from, modern life. The connoisseur of the street.

Documents Pour Artistes

As one century marched with alacrity toward another, a middle-aged gentleman was walking the streets of Paris making photographs of the great city’s boulevards and arcades. His calling card read E. Atget, Creator and Purveyor of a ‘Collection of Photographic Views of Old Paris.’ Earlier in life, Eugène Atget had spent time in the merchant navy before trying his hand at acting but eventually found his way to the camera. He began making documents, visual reference, of the city for artists. His love for the often hidden charm and beauty of the arrondissements and the life that populated them grew, and photographing the streets of the French capital became his raison d’être. As Vieux Paris was reshaped by systematic modernisation, Atget was consumed with the project of memorialising the pre-revolutionary neighbourhoods that were disappearing.

With his hat atop his head and engulfed in a black cloak, Atget would walk the streets of the city, his view camera carried by its tripod, slung over his shoulder. When something caught his attention, he would stop, set himself, and make a photograph. So varied was his work that archivists have split it into several categories and numerous subcategories: Picturesque Paris, Art in old Paris, Environs, Costumes, Interiors, and Paris Parks name but a few. In his tireless flânerie, Eugène Atget discovered the vibrant life that flowed through the arteries of Vieux Paris. His, often surreal, photographs would present the viewer with shop windows through which mannequins may peer, purveyors of small trades selling their wares, and prostitutes marking time in doorways. In short, it may be argued that Atget the flâneur was the forerunner of surrealist photography and the prototypical street photographer.

The Modern Flâneur

The street photographer then, in any of its modern guises, has its roots in the not-so-bygone social character of the 19th-century flâneur. Whether it was Henri Cartier-Bresson walking the roads of Europe and Asia, Helen Levitt or Garry Winogrand on the streets of New York, Daido Moriyama in Tokyo, or Peter Turnley among others in modern-day Paris, the street photographer is the modern explorer of the cityscape, attentive eyes wide open, rapt in curiosity.

In Melancholy Objects, the 3rd essay in Susan Sontag’s collection On Photography, she asserts that the photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker. Armed with a rangefinder, a medium format, or an SLR, the street photographer wanders in public spaces, a landscape of voluptuous extremes, observing with searching eyes, attuned to the rhythms and undulations of life on the street. Sontag goes on: Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque’. That, to me, could be the very dictionary definition of a street photographer.

To step expectantly into the rushing river of life on the street, an aimless, though hopeful, stroll across city squares, down busy streets, and through hidden walkways, is the optimistic mark of the street photographer. To be alone and yet simultaneously be surrounded by others. Whether in the photographer’s home city or one far away, like the flâneur, the street photographer is happy to walk and watch with patience and interest. Not only to watch but to see. As Baudelaire suggested, [t]o be absent from home and yet feel oneself everywhere at home; to view the world, to be at the heart of the world, and yet hidden from the world, […] one who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons for its many behaviours.

The Flâneurial Gaze

Even before I picked up a camera, for most of my adult life, when I would visit a new city, I would put my earphones in, some music on, and walk around. Not a conscious effort to get lost, but a lack of concern for keeping my bearings. In Doha, in 2012 during a hiatus from photography, I left the hotel and didn’t return for 5 hours, so fascinated was I of life on this new continent. People-watching is a pastime many partake in whether they name it or not. There is a simple pleasure in just watching. Looking. Anticipating what may develop. Telling oneself the story of the people that pass by.

In his writing, Walter Benjamin considered whether the flâneur, a figure keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, can enjoy the aimlessness of their existence or, in our modern capitalist world, must there be a product. Is the street photographer an unconscious answer to this need for productivity? The romantic thinks not. The artist hopes that the desire to tack on an aim to the aimlessness is nothing but an innate impulse toward creativity.

Benjamin’s flâneur walks out their door as if [they’ve] just arrived from a foreign country, and as they do so Baudelaire’s watches the river of life in its flow, so majestic, so brilliant.Atget’s successors do so with a camera in their hands, delighting, as Baudelaire puts it, in universal life. To notice then, as a street photographer, is to gaze at the world through the eyes of a flâneur.

Drunken horizons and all

Constantin Guys was an illustrator and thus free from the rules, regulations and constraints of the Académie française. Strictly held laws of art didn’t apply to the way in which he could depict the world. The modern flâneurs of, for instance, Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank, however unconsciously, threw aside the expectations and conventions of photographic academia to show the world that they saw in the manner in which they saw it, drunken horizons and all. Winogrand, of course, photographed the world to see what it look[ed] like photographed.

To be a flâneur is to be a street photographer is to be a flâneur. It is to walk among the crowd but to be separate from it. To stay curious, embrace chance, and discover the unexpected. It is to wander aimlessly but with aim, and see the city as a stage for all the human drama, comedy, and tragedy that may occur on its boards. To pay attention and notice small gestures, emotions, and expressions that hint towards an authentic, if fleeting, moment. Quick to react. 1/500th of a second then it’s gone. In short, to be a flâneur, to be a street photographer, is to hold on to that fascination and empathy for life outside our door.

So what do you think? Are you a flâneur or a flâneuse? Do you enjoy walking a town or city with manifest curiosity? Let me know in the comments.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Photos, Mostly 13: The Fugitive and the Infinite appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

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.

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 you make a photograph with sincere, honest intention and empathy, you have 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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Photos, Mostly 12: I Know You Are But What Am I? appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. This well-worn epigram is attributed to the Canadian ice-hockey legend, Wayne Gretzky (or, maybe, Michael Scott.) Though it has been flogged to death by linked-influencers and insufferable evangelists of the grindset, the droll truism nevertheless retains value, and we street photographers should bear it in mind.

The reason for reluctance varies in every missed shot, but photographers often say they simply were not open enough or not quite ready to make the picture. Opportunities squandered, then, by a failure to notice or impeded by distraction. More than once I have found myself on the street, camera in hand and yet, hindered by a loss of focus, a drop in confidence, the aftermath of a confrontation, or too much on my mind. I often reflect on the shots missed as a result.

In interviews and masterclasses, Brooklyn-born, Paris-dwelling street photographer Richard Kalvar talks of the French word disponible as a state of mind important to his practice – in his words, a necessary state for taking good pictures. It is a mindset within which the street photographer can be at their most receptive to the unknown, and benefit from the photographic riches that offers.

A Definition

Disponible is an adjective defined by the Larousse Dictionnaire as describing something available which one can dispose of. Think, for instance, of disposable income, free time, or rooms available in a hotel. Further down the dictionary’s short list of définitions, however, there is the phrase Qui est accueillant aux idées les plus diverses: Un esprit disponible. An available mind. Quite. Using this definition, then, and looking beyond the literal translation to a more esoteric, colloquial use, allows the word to define an open state of mind of someone emotionally available and receptive to the unforeseeable.

The Disponible Street Photographer

Despite claims to the contrary, most often by those with little experience or good judgement, street photography is not easy. Making good work can be tough, and distractions make it harder still. Minds wandering through the sinking quicksand of quotidian worries such as bills, chores, arguments, irritations, or even just what’s for dinner, are sure to miss those subtle, unpredictable moments that make for the best street photography. Shedding these diversions and concentrating on the world around, being mentally and emotionally open to the unpredictable, can take some experience but as with most creative labours, it becomes easier with practice.

How to be Disponible

To be open, available, and ready to photograph whatever the world may throw at us, a crucial, practical step is to have the camera in hand. If an implausible, remarkable thing occurs, the camera is of no use buried deep in a backpack. The frantic scramble to extricate it from its hiding place, as the frame disappears may be worthy of itself being snapped. Whether nipping over to the shops or stepping out the door for a long day of street photography, my camera is thrown over my left shoulder as I would a tote bag in my younger days as a music-biz hipster. Learning lessons from the past, the lens cap comes off before I even cross the threshold.

If you’ve deprived your bag of its camera, may I humbly suggest giving it a pair of headphones instead? Though some may lose themselves in music as they work, more often than not, this melodious blanket of noise covers the sounds of the city that may signal something worth photographing. Worse still are the podcasts. How can one be alert and observant when desperate to learn who indeed did commit that cold-case murder? Open and attentive it is not.

A State of Mind

This is, however, an essay about a state of mind, about cultivating a balance of the head and the heart to remain open to possibility even in the face of a difficult day. It starts with experience, of course. The more street photography we practice the more adept we will be in finding our focus. The first time we take to the street, camera around our neck, everything is new and can be overwhelming. The hundredth time, the thousandth, breeds confidence and gifts us literal and figurative muscle memory. To relax is to loosen up and to loosen up is to open ourselves to the unforeseen. Where once we may have been slow on the shutter to capture a furtive glance between strangers, now we are disponible and can anticipate the moment.

There is no obvious shortcut to this photographic mindfulness. A combination of curiosity, empathy, and experience helps develop a photographer’s eye. Through exposure to the work of the pantheon of street photography masters, through looking for the human connection, regular practice, and with reluctance, reflecting on the seemingly relentless, torrential failure that comes with getting good, we will begin to see the extraordinary in the everyday. Patterns, juxtapositions, gestures, expressions, and peculiar little dramas will present themselves in ways we may have overlooked before.

Inexperience tempts us to shut down ideas out of hand in the confident belief that they have been done before. It takes practice to avoid judgment or fear of cliches and anticipate the possibilities that may arise from them. Too often have I rolled my eyes at a scene, thinking I’ve seen it all before, only to get closer and see, much too late, an unusual or wry element that elevates an unimaginative scene into something special.

Disponible and the Unconscious

Henri Cartier-Bresson was an avowed surrealist. His friendship with André Breton, the author of the Surrealist Manifesto, taught him much about allowing the unconscious to come to the surface. He would talk of his photographic practice as allowing the photographic lens to look into the rubble of [his] unconscious and of chance. His camera, a combination of the psychiatrist’s couch, a machine gun and a warm kiss. As we become more comfortable in our own practice on the street, our open-mindedness and readiness to notice may be less calculation and more intuition. Often a scene will play out, manifest, in front of us and we need only be there to make the photograph. At other times, our experience teaches us to be sensitive to possibility. Our instinct hints that something may happen, often giving us the possibility to play with the very idea of what is real.

A Necessary State to Make Good Photographs

A disponible state of mind, then, allows us to be more open to read situations without distraction, and to see possible developments in interaction. To anticipate the release of a moment of tension, or conversely to feel the calm before the storm and pre-empt the moment to photograph as it happens. We see the many possibilities of things developing. When open and available, we are less distracted by what we see and more prepared to make an engaging photograph.

So, do you feel open and available when you are out photographing, or do you get distracted? Have you missed a significant shot by not being aware and ready? Maybe the concept of being a disponible street photographer sounds like nonsense? Let me know in the comments.

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, as a freelancer in the creative arts, every penny counts. 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. Your donations help me keep making photographs and writing.

All labour required to publish The Contact Sheet is undertaken by me alone. As I try to be a better socialist, I donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist, or progressive causes or organisations that help make the world a better place. Thank you!

The post Photos, Mostly 11: The Disponible Street Photographer appeared first on Neil Milton Photography.