EP 59: Street Photography, the City and You
After a little downtime, we're back -- and let's pick up with a fun one. On this episode, we continue our quest for ways to better connect with or figure out the city you're in -- whether it's your hometown or a place you've never been before. Here, we're documenting and learning the secrets of the city through street photography, as guided by notables from around the world. Hear from Craig Reilly (Street Photography International co-founder, Olympus ambassador), Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin (celebrated L.A. street photographer focused on the changing city) and Jerome De Perlinghi (career international photographer, Eyes on Main Street Photography Festival curator) on what they're able to extract between curiosity, chance, a walk, and a camera. We hit London, Los Angeles, Wilson (N.C.) and Kuala Lumpur. Craig Reilly https://www.craigreillyphotography.com/ Craig at Street Photography International https://streetphotographyinternational.com/craig-reilly/ Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin http://www.kwasiboydbouldin.com/ Kwasi in the New York Times https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/the-real-hollywood-without-the-glamour/ Jerome De Perlinghi https://jeromedeperlinghi.com/ Eyes on Main Street Photography Festival https://www.eyesonmainstreetwilson.com/#/
Top Keywords
- photography 0.025
- street photography 0.016
- street 0.014
- city 0.009
- photographer 0.008
- photograph 0.007
- mean 0.006
- photographers 0.006
- jerome 0.006
- photographs 0.006
- neighborhood 0.006
- time 0.006
Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. Yes. I do believe that, you know, photography, you know, has has an important role to play. The world is ever changing. That's why I love street photography because you never know who or what's gonna capture for a while, call it to the next. I've been taking pictures for quite a while, but I was inspired to really focus on the changing city just by how much LA has changed in the past decade. Remember when we did an episode about sound?
Urban soundscapes and what the audio of a city can tell us. It was one of our most popular episodes, and now we're coming at it from a different angle. Street photography and how it can unlock a city, even save its history, or just serve as one of the funnest and healthiest urban activities out there. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in the face of change from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. Episode 59.
But, you know, it's it's the small camera and the thousandth of a second that allow you to retrieve that intimacy out of all of this maelstrom going around. The fact that you can snip a thousandth of a second and that fact you learn how to feel your feeling about that thing.
This is legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz standing in the middle of New York City, 1981.
I mean, it's incoherent
in general. People from countless walks of life moving around him, doing their things there in the dense center of the city. Beautiful
women going by. Benders, runner, people running. The tumult of the street is is what New York City looks like in 1981. You stand here on this given day. Look at that. This is audio from a documentary about his work.
Joel is clutching a rangefinder camera, a Leica m specifically,
and raising it up to his eye at certain moments and snapping the shutter at a speed of one one thousandth of a second. And that thousandth of a second allows you to snip at it, you know? And then you get back what a thousandth of a second reveals, which is unbelievable. It's teaching us how to see. You can tune yourself up finer and finer like a good athlete. You can learn how to anticipate that that thing is gonna unfold in front of you in a thousandth of a second, and just maybe you'll be in the right place at the right time.
We've done episodes in the past about finding a new connection with your everyday locale, or creating a connection with a place you've just moved to, or different ways of looking at places you're visiting.
They're very much a record of where you are, how you feel about where you are, and when you're standing there. I mean, they're very existential in that sense. The place is crowded, it's full of activity and life. Pictures have that energy in it. The place is empty and quiet.
You may be very well familiar with your own neighborhood or your own downtown. You know your way around, you know the landmarks, street names. But what about those details you really can't know without spending the time to notice? Or by adopting a new way of observing something. Now, I gotta be careful in how I proceed here, because it could easily come off like feel good nonsense. But you get past that pretty quickly once you actually crack open this idea of taking an extra minute to think about what you're seeing, and mining that thing in front of you, that object or that piece of real estate, whatever it is, for details that you might be one of relatively few people to ever notice. Back in episode 22, urban soundscapes and active listening, we took on this concept from an audio perspective, or a listening perspective. Like just sitting down for a minute and picking through the details of what you hear around you, to see if you can dial in on the less obvious stuff. Things that might strike you as funny or mysterious. In that episode, we talked to people who make use of high quality stereo recording equipment in documenting the sound of a time and a place, in analyzing it, extracting things from it, and in some cases, hearing something that's intriguing, confounding, or mysterious enough, kind of like knowledge you would otherwise never possess about the behavior of a place. Alright. So this episode we're talking photography, specifically street photography, and other genres that incorporate that sense of freezing something unusual, or something that won't ever happen again in the same way, ever. Or a moment that just defines that time and place in a developed and changing world, in big cities or small towns. Even if it's the the town you've lived in your entire life. Don't doubt it. We've got some high caliber photographers on this episode to walk us through. And we even talked with one whose work might have an entire city thinking differently about itself.
Well, street photography, for me, because there are many definitions, like, people have their own definitions of street photography. For me, it's capturing a candid moment within a public place. My name is Craig Riley. I live just outside London, and I'm a street photographer.
Craig Riley is co founder of Street Photography International, and is an ambassador for Olympus cameras.
I suppose my initial draw to the genre was my fascination with human interaction in general, really, and being able to capture those sort of moments I was in. And as my eye has developed and progressed, the city and the backdrop or the scene, if you like, I've been able to include
on a more artistic level. The street photography is so good, you kinda wonder how he did it. It looks like scenes from a movie. He scopes out places with interesting lighting and architectural shapes that serve as the right framing for whatever moment comes along. Often in the form of a person or persons entering that location and interacting in some kind of interesting way. A way that sums up what that scene is all about. So as just a hypothetical, maybe that scene is a bunch of stern looking adults walking to work in the rain with umbrellas over their heads, but in the middle of them is this relaxed looking guy without any umbrella, just kind of doing his thing, smiling, and you just happen to capture that contrast with your camera, that scene. I mean, you couldn't plan for that, but the situation presented itself to you because you trained your eye to the character of the city. So has photography or street photography more specifically, helped you better connect with the cities that you that you visit or the city you live in? Yeah. I would say so. Absolutely. Because
there are so many locations that you actually almost study to a level, because you've you actually appreciate your surroundings far greater. You know, because we're especially in cities like London, you know, a very busy city where everybody on a on a daily commute are just in such a a rush in their own zone to get to, like, from point a to point b. They don't really appreciate, you know, their surroundings. And and for me, you know, when I do come across a scene that I that I like the looks of, whether that be the the light the way the light's hitting it or, you know, certain weather, you know, for instance, or rain, you know, you you study from every angle, and point of, point of view as well. So it's you've taken everything into consideration around that whole location. I also believe that the beauty of street photography is you're capturing history as well, you know, because London, again, is such a, an ever changing city, with a skyline. You know, you're capturing in certain locations and documenting a a part of its history. So, you know, five, ten years down the line, that building could not be there or it could be completely changed.
Quasi Boyd Bolden is a Los Angeles based street photographer working exactly on the value that Craig Riley just described. Of archiving, documenting change in a city, the importance of which can go several different directions. Last year, Time magazine picked him as one of 12 African American photographers to follow. The same year, the New York Times did a piece on him as well. Here's one paragraph from that New York Times piece that stands out, talking about his time growing up in Hollywood. A trained observer of his cityscape, he studied the alleys and avenues, the angles of buildings against the sky. Like Jane Goodall studied lowland gorillas. Quasi today documents neighborhood change. As things change, what's lost? What's won? How does development of any kind change the feeling of a place? Where is it going? And how does that question get us thinking about planning and and design and place?
I've been taking pictures for for quite a while, but I I was inspired to really focus on the changing city just just by how much LA has changed in the past decade and how how that change is kind of accelerating.
How long ago did you kinda get in the mind of of wanting to document the change?
You know, it's really interesting because, I mean, when I was younger, I grew up skateboarding. So I I've always had an interesting relationship with the city. Mhmm. And so basically, I, you know, I was all around kind of exploring, you know, the nooks and crannies of of LA. And when I got into photography, I was always I've always been inspired by landscape photography in general and be being that this is where I live, I this was naturally the type of work I was drawn to doing. Mhmm. And it it actually didn't come together as an, as a project until maybe, like, maybe six or seven years ago. But before that, all my work up until then really kind of fit that narrative. I just haven't really recognized it. When, you go out to to photograph different locations,
landscapes, city scenes, that kinda thing, what, do do you kinda set out to do something, or is it just kinda like the the wandering, exercise of just let let me see what I can get, or or do you kinda plan it out?
You know, it it it depends. I I I've learned to trust my own experience in terms of what my what catches my eye and what my eye find is interesting. And I think that that's one of the ways that growing up in Los Angeles has has had a a positive impact on my on me as a photographer. Because context is is key, and a lot of things that may catch the eye of someone who's lived there for a long time or in this particular neighborhood may not be an obvious thing that's photographed for someone who just moved there or who someone who's just walking through. Mhmm. So I I feel like that's a valuable perspective. So a lot of times, I do try to build in the opportunity to wander to just kind of soak it in and to and to see what's changed or to see what sticks out to me. And and, normally, when I when I look back at it or when I go back to edit a project or whatnot, that pays dividends because I can string together a group of images of things that are are gone or about to about to disappear or whatnot, and and you end up with a collection of images of a place that's not even really there anymore.
So, you know, what some people might call data analysis, you know, kinda kinda looking at the information they've gathered and kinda laying it all out before you. What what have you sensed over time with regard to Los Angeles and individual neighborhoods? Or what what have been some of your takeaways from this?
Well, I mean, basically, it's really interesting, because, you know, I primarily spend most of my time growing up in Hollywood. And Hollywood is a place where it has a very big reputation that has nothing to do with what it's actually like to live there. Mhmm. Yeah. And and so that that was that was always the dynamic that my friends and I growing up were were were pretty well aware of. I mean, there was always Hollywood Boulevard. There was always things like that. But once you got into the neighborhood and the the people that live there, it was pretty much a a a middle to lower middle class, like, working neighborhood. You know, pretty pretty, heavy on on immigrants and and and, you know, very diverse. And it it it was just an interesting place to live. And that that's the Hollywood that I know. That's Hollywood I grew up in basically, like, the the mid to late nineties. And as I got older, you know, and, and ventured out a little bit, it really started to change. I mean, first, it it got kind of bad, but then you just noticed that rents are steadily starting to rise. And and a lot of the buildings that used to be there are are being turned into, you know, you know, mom and pop stores are being turned into more generic kind of big box manufacturers and places you know, landmarks that used to be there are are just gone. You just start to see these, like, these subtle shifts that, you know, I when you first when you first see them when you're younger, you're you're kind of you don't really pay very much attention to it. But over time, there's this effect where it really starts to change the landscape and the entire feel of the neighborhood. And once I once I noticed that, I I just realized that the the place that I grew up was disappearing, and it was being replaced by something. It was evolving, but I I wanted to share a little bit of what I was familiar with.
Yeah. And, you know, when you do look at change over time, especially at the neighborhood level and some of the vestigial things kinda going away and some of the mom and pop stores going away and then new kinds of businesses moving in, new kinds of people moving in, you know, you might ask one person and say, well, this this is good. This is progress. This is growth. Then you ask another person, you'll say, yeah. But there's a lot being lost with this. So it Yeah. It's that there's a lot to think about. And
has your photography started any conversations to that end? Are you kinda sharing it out that way? Or well, in a lot of ways, I I I kinda split the difference. I mean, I think investment in communities is good. And I I think investment in, you know, any kind of community as far as bringing new opportunities to people that live there is a really good thing. So I'm I'm all pro development in that respect. But I think that, you know, with my with my photography and in particular with the with the project I've been working on, I really tend to focus on what has been lost because the people who are benefiting from the development aren't the people that live in the neighborhood. As Quasi documents change or as any of us document local change, it might get us wondering what we've already missed by not stopping to take a look. I asked Quasi if he notices things that he'd never consciously seen before while walking around with his camera, even if it is in the area that he knows inside and out, the area he grew up in. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's that's the best thing. And that's honestly, like, that's one of the things that I feel like is being loved. Like, I mean, neighborhoods change. They're so dynamic. I mean, every neighborhood is dynamic. I'm sure I'm sure the neighborhood where you live is dynamic. Mhmm. Every every place where people make their home and and decide to put roots down there is is almost a a breeding organism in itself. So every time I revisit any neighborhood I grew up in or or whatnot or any place I'm really familiar with, I'm always surprised with how it's changed, not only in, oh, this store has disappeared or whatnot. I mean, I'm surprised by by things I see, by by by people, by by every everything about it. It it it's a constant evolution. And the one thing about life in LA is it's just so busy. I mean, Hollywood is such a busy place. And so Yeah. At any given moment, I mean, you can, you know, you can photograph a corner one day and literally go back, photograph the same corner, and get a completely different vibe, group of people, everything. I mean, the landscape doesn't change, but the people interacting with the landscape really color what, you know, what you're able to document. And and, I mean, it's a beautiful thing.
It doesn't just go with surroundings. It also goes with, the the subjects, the people within that city. This is Craig Riley again. You know, because at that current moment in time, you know, everybody's on their smartphones. And, you know, you're you're documenting that, you know, pretty much every day. And it does get to a point, okay, well, I can't, you know, I've done that sort of type of photo before. So, no, I will, like, tend to steer clear of those sort of shots now. But, you know, that's that's what we're having to work with at this moment in time as street copers. Everybody is on their phones. So, you know, who knows down to, like, five, ten years down the line, you know, how quickly technology changes. But people, you know, people will be laughed at their own mobile, like, mobile phones at the time. You know, it could be you've documented those side of things, not clothes and that sort of fashion. And it's technology. Is, you know, because the the world is ever changing.
That's a point I hear from a lot of street photographers about everyone's heads being stuck in their smartphones when they're in the public space. And and, yeah, I'm guilty as well. But it's multi pronged. It's not just the lament of the street photographer that all the photographs they take are of people on their phones, even though that is documentary and may serve as some kind of commentary. But the other lament I hear from that community and from many other communities is just in the observation that people aren't taking the time to be curious about their city in a very fundamental, simple sense or advanced sense, whether it's noticing neighborhood change like Quasi was talking about or the appreciation for simple interactions and time placed documentation the way that Craig described it. Just something to connect with, where you live or where you're visiting, especially as it may apply to people who are new to an area and haven't found their footing yet or their connection yet with that area. This isn't to come off preachy or anything like that. But again, a focus of this episode is about taking the time to look at your city in ways you haven't before, to see what you can draw from it or take pleasure in or something to study. Street photography being just one good, fun, or even therapeutic or healthy way of doing that because because it encourages you to get out and walk. But finally getting to the segue I was looking for, there's also some commentary on how we interact with images these days with art. And, yes, this will tie in with cities.
Nowadays, we've been so used of, looking at the photograph that the size of the screen of our
iPhone or Samsung or whatever brand you love, you know. This is Jerome de Perlingy, whose photography portfolio spans decades and includes street photos from all over the world. He's extremely accomplished with street photography and with portraits. John Malkovich, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry are just a few people he's worked with. On the point about photography being enjoyed through smartphones, Jerome is blowing up photographs to large proportions for display in downtown Wilson, North Carolina. A town of roughly 50,000 people about forty minutes down the road from me. Jerome, who comes from Belgium, is the curator of the Eyes on Main Street photo festival that brings people from all over to participate. The soul of this festival is outdoors, downtown, and the twenty nineteen edition that he's working on for April will transform the historic downtown area itself into a gallery of large photographs spanning six blocks. And these photographs are, yeah, taken by notable photographers from all over the planet. Jerome said the festival has a number of funding sources, including local government. It brings in a lot of people, and a feature here is that Eyes on Main Street also brings in photographers from across the globe for a residency program in Wilson. A resident program where we invite one photographer each month coming from all over the world to record the city life here in Wilson. Again, international photographers coming in to capture this relatively small town, which can say a lot for what people see when they visit. Sometimes it's portraits, sometimes it's abandoned buildings. Either way, it's exciting to see what they come out with, when a specific city or town is the focus. Jerome thinks we can learn a lot from that, whether it's a photo of downtown street life or a photo from a conflict zone in a nation that many of us wouldn't feel comfortable visiting, and probably wouldn't see much of without a photographer's lens. And so, yes, indeed, here with us, by,
being able to put, fairly large photographs, it gives, you know, the body of work, you know, a much different reading. And so that's the reason why, of course, you know, things you would never see on your phone, you know, start to become clear on a larger photograph. Yes. I do believe that, you know, photography, you know, has has an important role to play, you know, in in a sense, educating people, you know, just so we are also very proud that we have a young public, you know, because, the, these young photographers, of course, are also taken through the main show. They get, you know, we we try to make them understand the framing, composition, and so on. And then sometimes, so you are in front of an image where you realize that, life is tough. But I think it's important for all the viewers or readers, you know, you call them how however you want, to get something out of it. You know, sometimes we tend to complain. We're not happy. You know? It's been just election time. Now we're not happy. And and and and sometimes we have a reason not to be happy, of course. But, so we can also see that, well, life is a lot tougher for a lot lot more people and a lot tougher than us. You know? Tonight, we know there's many different things we we won't have to search for. You and me most likely won't have to search for food tonight. We'll we'll have clean water. You know, we'll have hot water if you want to, and so on. We could go on. And so it can actually really, I think, help, you know, form an an an an idea about, you know, all what's happening, you know, around us. And so, and and and and become ourself, you know, a little more educated, a little more, you know, patient, a little more, you know, accept things of life more easily.
Part of the point of blowing up the photographs to large proportions for the festival is to give you something to study, details to notice that you otherwise might not from big gallery sized images.
Often these details give us something to relate to. In most all of them, you you would be able to find elements that, you know, make you think about life in general. Being in a in a very large city, you know, of course, every year there's some photographs from New York City, bustling. But every year, there's also some photographs from very, very small towns or even villages because the theme is main street. But in in a village, the the small dirt road in the middle of the village is that main street of that village. And so, and then we had a a nice photograph where kids, were going to school in uniform, and then you could realize when you look closer up that many kids many of these kids didn't have shoes. So they were it was a dirt road. They were they were walking to school with no shoes. And I think, you know, for some some children, even older children, you know, who saw that image, they they realized at once that, oh, wow. These kids have no shoes. You know? So, so then, you know, it it all depends on how you understand it. You know? What what do you get out of that image? You know? That's for each individual person to to to to to understand, to to realize, to to to cope with it. You know? But, I think, yes, photography, especially that this photograph stable for for one hundred days. So you have time to to to have the image thinking you, you know, think in your brain. You know, to basically, you have time to sometimes at night, you know, when I when I wake up, you know, I think about the image and then, how did I see this? You know? And then and I guess and I hope some other people have the same kind of, you know, process where and then the next day, they can go and and check it out. The photographer in residence for December 2018, as I speak, is Andrea Torre from Italy, whose people focused street photography most recently from the West African nation of Ghana is bafflingly good.
Photographers scheduled to photograph Wilson in the months ahead are coming in from Turkey, Rwanda, Argentina, Lithuania, and The US. Jerome said the people of Wilson really look after them. They've accepted
these artists as their own. So they've really become part of the community. So, most of them are invited, you know, almost every week to a meal, you know, to a party. Some people come and, you know, take them out to lunch and so on. So that's the community has been, really very nice. And and as you say, in French, you would say, you know,
they've embraced, you know, all the artists here Yeah. Coming here. There are way too many cool features about this photography festival to cover on this podcast, but I will mention a favorite. There's a kids gallery involving kids in photography, often underprivileged kids, going out with cameras, getting street shots in Wilson, detail shots, things from around the city outdoors, which creates not only a skill and an outlet for these kids, but also appreciation for their surroundings and a new way of seeing it. We're very proud of that program.
And so we have roughly about 100 kids, mostly under underprivileged kids, you know, who work with us for a whole week, and we produce, I think, or they produce, I should say, a body of work that's really, really very interesting. Some of these kids end up on the map, by the way. Jerome recently brought their images to the Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival in Malaysia. And so we displayed that part, you know, in Kuala Lumpur. And so I made a little clip, so I sent it back home here to Wilson, and I think quite a lot of people did enjoy that. You know, it's not always that, you know, children most of them are aged between eight and 15, with the majority being 10, 11, 12, but their work was on display, on on the other side of the world.
Okay. So I think we mostly covered it. This episode wasn't supposed to be a love letter to photography really, but rather how it can change our experience and sense of place and discovery. I just couldn't end the episode without this story, which is completely appropriate to the serendipity nature of street photography. Here's Craig Riley. When I,
took a photograph of an elderly lady in the coffee shop window, she just, as a a visual, she just had such a, an interesting face. And, you know, there was there was so much so many stories, within of her her mind just through her her look. And, I I took her photo and posted it on Twitter, and I received a reply from, one of my followers who's who said that I actually looked like,
the famous street photography herself, Dorothy Bohm. Dorothy Bohm, who is currently 94 years old, is a London based photographer. The Guardian newspaper actually did a profile on her last year in which she mentioned that her archive of photographs
is seventy five years deep. She's pretty highly regarded in the street photography world. Twenty years later, I got another message saying I can confirm that is my grandmother getting a taste of her own medicine. And then that sort of progressed into me contacting Dorothy's daughter and setting up, a meeting with Dorothy at her home. And, I mean, just speaking to her, you know, on my first impression was Dorothy is the most amazing person I've ever had the pleasure to talk to in in terms of everything that she has done and everything that's happened to her in her life. And so, I mean, that's that's the biggest thing of like, for me to realize, you know, that's that's why I love street photography because you never know who or what she's gonna capture from one caller to the next.
Final word from Quasi Boyd Bolden. Well, I mean, I can honestly say that, you know, for for me personally, photography keeps me connected to the people that live in the city. I mean, LA is dominated by car culture, and people are normally driving and in their box is or or very separate. And the opportunity to be out and be among people and and document moments that normally go unrecognized, I feel is is a great way to show a side of life there that that honestly, I I feel like it's a very true side of life. I mean, obviously, I'm a photographer. I'm picking my moment, so it is my interpretation of it. But I do think that that's a way to kind of preserve a an atmosphere that isn't really easily, communicated without a photograph. It's a unique sort of it's a unique sort of dynamic. And I think that being able to look back at that, people who, you know, whatever your connection to the place may be, whether you're visiting or whether you are, you know, a local or whatnot, you can look at it and you can, you know, something comes across in the picture that is very hard to explain. I mean, one of the, you know, I I've I've been lucky enough to have some exposure over the past couple years with my work, but I can honestly say that whenever I run into somebody that I actually went to elementary school with or someone that is a, you know, a lifelong, you know, resident of LA and they've seen my work and what they tell me, that's really what makes me feel great about what I'm doing because it it jogs a good memory for people that that they may have forgotten or that they they didn't even notice.
Thanks so much for listening. I'll have links to everything we talked about here, the work of Craig Riley, Quasi Boyd Bolden, and Jerome de Perlingy along with the Eyes on Main Street Festival in the show notes with this episode at municipalequation.libsyn.com. Libsyn is spelled L I B S Y n. Municipalequation.libsyn.com. If you have street photography to share, post it to Twitter and tag me. The handle is muniequation. M u n I equation. You can listen to past episodes of Municipal Equation at nclm.org/municipalequation. We did go a couple extra weeks without an episode, and I wanted to bring it back with this kind of vibe. Rather than things that are a little bit too laden with policy questions and so on, that we do have that coming and yes, it will concern you and yes, it will be interesting. So stay tuned for that. If you have an idea for a show, anything interesting that implicates or has to do with the space of cities and towns, urban or rural, send me an email, bbrown@nclm.org. My name is Ben Brown, and this podcast is brought to you by the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.0rg. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again soon.
