the street

brief : For the past five years, my lens has concentrated on the instantaneity, spontaneity and multiplicity of the street environment. I have experimented with many aspects of the street on a variety of film and digital equipment. These images show my development into the genre of street photography before I decided to become stricter in my approach to it.


Due to the sheer immensity of the street, it has now become necessary to define clear objectives when I photograph in this environment. The need for this is demonstrated by the variety and random nature of the street photography in this section.


Whilst these images work successfully on their own, they are less successful as a collective, which is why my approach to street photography is now confined to clearly defined and planned projects, such as Zero, East Meets West and Urban Spray.


This section, however, is important, as it demonstrates the various approaches I have undertaken towards street photography, in terms of using colour and black and white, film and digital, SLR and rangefinder, and taking into account the styles of several influences to look at the various themes that exist in the street, i.e. the people, the insignificance of the individual, the architecture, the polarisation between rich and poor and the significance of visual imagery and advertising.


influences : Tom Wood / Robert Frank / Garry Winogrand / Diane Arbus / Tony Ray Jones / Helen Levitt / Lee Friedlander / Bruce Davidson


equipment : I have used a lot of different equipment over the last five years, but the camera that has stood out from the rest is my Contax G2 rangefinder camera. More recently the use of a 21mm lens, almost exclusively, has had serious implications over my style and approach to street photography.


keywords : street photography, photo, picture, photos, pictures, pic, pics, urban photography, social documentary, Robert Frank The Americans, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Tony Ray Jones, Tom Wood, Helen Levitt, Bruce Davidson, Robert Polidori, urban landscape, street photography