When I became serious about photography in the early 1970s I got to know photographers that explained their photography style as part of a movement in photography that I described as “street photography.” Those that practiced it spent their days searching out subjects in and around city centres; buildings, people, plants, shadows and so on, anything that appeared in any form on a public street.
There were rules (or sort of rules) that they tried to stay with. Their subjects should be unique and interesting without cropping the original and the photograph were always black and white. The photo magazines of the day had lots of examples from around the world and one could expect to see individual shows hanging in different establishments at the time. It wasn’t unusual to walk into a small cafe, order food and spend the next fifteen or twenty minutes looking at the images captured on local streets.
Serious practitioners of this type of photography disdained cropping and most of them preferred to use 50mm lenses - saying that focal length was closest to what the human eye saw. I can remember a friend criticizing me and saying I was “cheating” by using one of the new at that time zoom lenses that let me change the focal length at will. He didn’t like them and believed they couldn’t be very sharp and probably would never be that popular among serious photographers anyway.
He was talking about my new Vivitar 70-210mm zoom lens. Zoom lenses were just becoming popular in early 1997 and the Vivitar was one of the sharpest. I lost touch with that guy and I wonder what he is using now. Hmm, probably an auto focus zoom lens like the rest of us.
I wrote the preceding as part of an article back in September 2008. I began thinking about all that as I watched a YouTube video titled, “A day with New York Photographer Jas Leon.” Leon is a young 20-something street photographer that carries and old 35mm Leica and a Rolliflex medium format twin lens reflex camera and had just begun using black and white film.
The program followed her quickly photographing people while she walked down a busy NY city street. As she walked through the city she would discuss her work and answer questions by the person making the video. I enjoyed watching Leon move though the city making photos while on the move and what caught my attention was, as she spoke of her photography she sounded very much like those 1970 “street” photographers I began this article with. Even though that was over 50 years ago, Jas Leon (her cameras and preference of black and white film) would fit right in.
I’ll mention that I happened to come across Leon’s YouTube video as I was looking for anything on modern photographers using Rolliflex or Mamiya TTL (Twin Lens Reflex) medium format cameras. I own both and have been thinking about Jo and I wandering around the city with those cameras to see how that affected our photography. This exciting medium is advancing so fast and yet there is always something that will remind me how it can stay the same over the years.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
