This lecture I was looking forward to as street photography has always intrigued me. How it is really about being in the right moment at the right time. Street photographers capture some of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching and outstanding photographs in the world in my opinion. This lecture introduced me to street photographers that I have a new interest in and will research further into such as Robert Frank.
In-Depth Lecture Notes
Where is the street?
Marcel Proust, cited in Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams:
“The streets belong to everybody, I repeated to myself”
Andre Kertesz, Meudon Paris, 1928
Andre Kertesz, Meudon Paris, 1928
Clash of different speeds
Busy
Strange
Unsettling
Left in doubt
Photographing uncanny moments
Robert Doisneau, Be-Bop-En cave, Vieux-Colombier, 1948
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Coronation of King George VI
The street as a series of collisions of dysfunctions…
Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Poetry includes two elements which are suddenly in conflict – a spark between two elements”
La Revolution Surrealiste, No.11, 1928
The importance of the street.
How to look for that which ‘falls out’ of representation?
How to look into the ‘underneath’ of the street?
To ‘search the gutter’ for a subject.
Robert Frank, from the bus, NY, 1958
Speeds of the street
Try not to settle in space, constantly moving on.
The street as a particular ‘mode’.
A way of experimenting urban life.
How is a street ‘made’?
Is the ‘street’ a collection of people, the production of people, the arrangement and relation of people to place…
When is the ‘street’?
Who uses it ans when?
How does a street organise movement?
What ‘breaks’ and ‘flows’ are present?
A site of? Danger, excitement etc…
The street – a carrier of things.
The activity that turns a space into a place.
Street – transformed and made by the whom walk it.
Paul Virrilio
“The screen abruptly became the town square”
Street is where people display themselves to others, a relational space.
Street fashion as distinct.
Bill Cunningham – Vintage NY subway
Kings Road – Street where punk was found
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- Punks hanging out on the Kings Road, London 1983
Jump into the ‘energy’ of the street
William Klein – French Vogue
Helmut Newton
The revival of ‘street-style’ in current fashion.
Time, temporarily and tempo.
People as image?
Screen as street?
Jade Isted / reflective journal 