{"id":3165,"date":"2023-07-28T20:09:08","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T12:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/?p=3165"},"modified":"2023-07-28T20:09:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T12:09:08","slug":"no-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/2023\/no-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"No Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLook at this!\u201d a friend of mine said the other day, shoving his phone at me. \u201cI took it completely by accident!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a bad shot, a tilted, blurry image of some people on a sidewalk. But what had so impressed my friend was that it wasn\u2019t what he usually took, i.e. shots of posed friends eating food, the food itself, sunsets, artsy posters, etc. My friend, in his mind, had just accomplished street photography<\/i>. He had joined the club and was ready to don The Hat. I appreciated his confiding in me and loved to see him happy; friends are more important than photography after all. But it wasn\u2019t the first time I\u2019d encountered the perception of street photography as basically just accidents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an easy assumption to make; the very nature of street photography is based on observations of candid, unplanned (by the photographer) scenes. And most people tend to extend that description of the subject matter to the practice itself. Street photography, in their minds, can only<\/i> happen by accident. Practitioners of other types of photography note the lack of control they usually wield in terms of setting up shots, lighting, models, poses, etc., and conclude that, minus that level of control, one is left completely at the mercy of the universe (although in my experience the universe can and does provide better than I can, so I\u2019m good with that). It also explains the acclaim for photos of actual accidents, mishaps, juxtapositions, etc. within the genre. People posting photos in online critique threads often also add long explanations to their submissions, saying this or that happened \u201cby accident\u201d to stave off any accusations or criticism. It wasn\u2019t their fault, you see, because, well, street, <\/i>you know\u2026it just happened<\/i>. By the same token, \u201cLuck\u201d is often used to describe more successful shots, but it boils down to the same thing.<\/p>\n

One of the results of this view is a general sense that there can\u2019t be much actual skill or technique involved in the practice of street photography; one is just naturally lucky or not. It\u2019s a comforting thought for many people; no one can be to blame for poor results. In my experience teaching street photography, I\u2019ve found that instructing students who see photos but need help refining how to express what they see through compelling work is a completely different endeavor than advising students who simply don\u2019t see photos and complain that \u201cthere\u2019s just nothing happening!\u201d I try to meet students where they are, but this is difficult territory to traverse because I can\u2019t tell others what should strike them as photographable beyond, well, just about anything and everything, depending on what you notice and how you perceive it. They assume that such work \u201cjust happens\u201d and all they have to do is be at the \u201cright\u201d spot with the \u201cright\u201d camera and boom: ART. Presented with collected works of street photographs that were accumulated, crafted and edited over the course of several years or decades, their takeaway is somehow that all of these scenes must be just waiting for them, in perfect order and wrapped up with a bow, during a single fast-paced stride down the block, Right Camera held out in front of them to capture that inevitable decisive moment. When it seldom happens, or when they miss it when it does, the walk was disappointing and a waste of time. They conclude that they\u2019re just not lucky and either give up or simply take bad photos of unhoused people they deem \u201cinteresting characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not long ago I responded to a post by a well-known photography blogger concerning street photography, including tips and tricks and other advice, some of which I found rather questionable, e.g.: \u201cHave a friend with you…if you’re a larger male, being in the company of a female works wonders. Women in particular seem to think: Well,\u00a0she\u00a0trusts him, so he’s probably all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thing is, said blogger is not a street photographer, his experience largely deriving from equipment reviews, and has never shown much particular aptitude in that respect. Though I refrained from singling him out, I couldn\u2019t help but observe that, unlike other genres, street photography seems to tempt those who don\u2019t really do it very well to tell others how to do it. I never see people telling others how to do, say, fashion photography without at least having done it themselves with some amount of success, but with Street I see it all the time. When said blogger didn\u2019t publish my comment, I thought: Perhaps he is rethinking the matter.<\/p>\n

Well.<\/p>\n

His very next post had my comment pegged in bold at the top, though without a link as if he were protecting me from myself, while he exhorted his followers to just look at the ridiculousness he had to put up with. His answer to my effrontery? \u201cWell, of course! If someone is naturally good at something and has never experienced problems, how would they know what the problems are?\u201d He then posted about how failure was a good thing, and then had some kind of existential crisis before boasting about one of his images making Flickr\u2019s Explore page, with repeatedly updated Like and View numbers for our enlightenment followed by a print sale of said photo for several hundred dollars. This man went on a journey<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It would seem that even most photographers see street photography to be by its very nature accidental. Anyone can do it, and everyone seemingly does; I\u2019ve seen \u201cStreet\u201d listed in the bios of photographers who do everything from salon to product photography. In their minds, there are no problems to be experienced with street photography; it simply is<\/i>, and the good shots \u201cjust happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve listened to people attending exhibits featuring classic street photography works by great artists such as Erwitt, Cartier-bresson, Maier, Parks, Frank, Levitt, Winogrand and Eggleston, and many if not most of the comments centered on the photographer\u2019s \u201cincredible luck\u201d to have been where they were when they were, as if all of these scenes were just occurring all around them all the time. You can hear the frustration in the responses of Winogrand and Eggleston in interviews, resorting to mystic, haiku-like responses, clearly at a loss to describe to others how they perceive the world around them, how they convey their vision and interpretation of culture and society through photography when what people really want to know is how to be lucky.<\/p>\n

The only thing one can<\/i> do, according to the truly astounding amount of \u201cinstructional\u201d street photography videos on Youtube by people who for the most part demonstrably don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing, is increase one\u2019s odds by traveling to as many \u201cinteresting\u201d places as possible. Indeed, there is a group of people, mostly older\/independently wealthy white people from Western nations who more or less constantly attend modern-day photo safaris held year-round all around the world, mostly in what they call \u201cimage-rich\u201d third-world cultures, entering the resulting photos in the slew of online contests that charge for each entry and often \u201cwinning\u201d them. And I can\u2019t blame them; it sounds like an incredible life for those who have the means, probably better than sitting around one\u2019s mansion pool snorting coke and yelling at one\u2019s trust fund accountants or whatever else it is rich people do. And if one indeed has entirely too much money, one can attend several Magnum workshops, use the best equipment, and, most importantly, rub shoulders with the people who can get one\u2019s work out there, books published, with gallery exhibitions and articles in the New York Times and The Guardian. There\u2019s a reason virtually all of the internationally published street photography compilations have been compiled by a group of straight white cis British men that could fit comfortably in a single taxi. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But say as it happens you don\u2019t have access to a shit-ton of moolah, and have to work at a job every day just to make ends meet. You\u2019re not \u201cknown\u201d by anyone of consequence, which is a Catch-22: If you\u2019re not known, there\u2019s not much you can do to change that situation. It\u2019s no accident that people such as Cartier-bresson and Eggleston came from wealthy families, or that Magnum members in the early days could ask their friends at lunch at Le D\u00f4me<\/span>: \u201cHold on, you\u2019re<\/i> a photographer, how\u2019d you like to join Magnum?\u201d while Maier\u2019s fame came about only after her unfortunate and sad demise, after she had labored to make the work she did while holding down difficult jobs her entire life, and after her work was \u201cdiscovered\u201d by a random white dude bidding on the detritus of her life at a public auction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t social media supposed to change all of that, to spread the opportunity a bit wider? It certainly has changed a great deal, but access remains a problem. The Instagram account \u201cPhotographers Photographed\u201d typically features well-known photographers caught in the act of photographing. But if you yourself are not well-known, it doesn\u2019t matter whom you caught photographing; the account\u2019s owner only communicates with \u201cknown\u201d photographers; your message will not be read. You might have caught a wonderful moment of ol’ Henri himself taking a rare photo with his Leica in 2003 on the streets of Paris, but if you\u2019re not on the list, it might as well not exist.<\/p>\n

So in a way, accidents and luck do<\/i> play a huge role in success in the street photography world, just not the kind of accidents most people have in mind. One can work for decades improving one\u2019s craft, vision, observational and photographic skills to create a compelling, emotive body of work. That part isn\u2019t luck; it\u2019s work, effort and practice. What is<\/i> luck is belonging to a class, demographic and culture where one\u2019s privilege, means and connections allow for a relatively easy path to success. I personally have had access to opportunities other photographers did not through no fault of their own. Women street photographers have only recently made significant strides in this respect, and while it is not only amazing that it took so long to make even that amount of progress, such longstanding prejudices remain not only pervasive but are largely ignored by those in power. Why do African street photographers struggle to find representation in an international street photography sphere of influence essentially run by a handful of white British dudes? That, I\u2019m sorry to say, is no accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLook at this!\u201d a friend of mine said the other day, shoving his phone at me. \u201cI took it completely by accident!\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a bad shot, a tilted, blurry image of some people on a sidewalk. But what had so impressed my friend was that it wasn\u2019t what he usually took, i.e. shots of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[145,62,83],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poagao.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}