Personal Project #2: Street Photography
“Everybody Street illuminates the lives and work of New York’s iconic street photographers and the incomparable city that has inspired them for decades. The documentary pays tribute to the spirit of street photography through a cinematic exploration of New York City, and captures the visceral rush, singular perseverance and at times immediate danger customary to these artists. Covering nine decades of street photography, “Everybody Street” explores the careers and influences of many notable photographers––a number of whom have never been documented, featuring: Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Jill Freedman, Bruce Gilden, Joel Meyerowitz, Rebecca Lepkoff, Mary Ellen Mark, Jeff Mermelstein, Clayton Patterson, Ricky Powell, Jamel Shabazz, Martha Cooper, and Boogie, with historians Max Kozloff and Luc Sante."
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Jamal Shabazz - Street photographer
My favourite street photographer from the film 'Everybody Street' is Jamal Shabazz.
Jamal Shabazz is a street photographer who has been "documenting the urban life" for over 30 years and has seen the world change through the lens of his camera since he was 15. His main inspirations include from the great James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa, Chester Higgins and Eli Reed. some of my favourite pieces of his include the above.
The image the the right is my favourite image of shabazz's photography.
The colourful street view shows a man wrestling a muscly looking dog of what looks like a womans hand bag or purse of some kind whilst a father and son look on him in wonder from the path on the far right of the picture. On the far left of the picture a man, with a white carrier bag (similar to the son's) stepping up onto the kerb looks on the man as if he is going to run over and intervene. The man swinging the dirty caramel coloured dog himself is wearing a red jumper, cowboy boots and blue jeans with a thin diamond blue seam running from his waist to his foot with only a slight crinkle at the knee. This black haired man looks to me as if he had no idea of the shenanigans he was to face when he walked out his door in the morning. Perhaps he is a Thief? It is almost definitely a man due to his large side burns so the question of why is he fighting for the bag is raised. maybe he stole it, maybe he is helping a woman out or maybe he just liked the bag and decided to buy it and he is just defending what is his... |
I believe the photographer was knelt up in the middle of the road looking from the side onto the commotion. In this position, Jamal Shabazz captures not only clearly the dog and the man but also the onlookers and their stances and expressions toward them. The littered, puddle ridden street really adds to the image as a whole because it shows the imperfection of living in a big city. A lot of people have a lot of waste.
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Some of my street photography in the school.
my favorite photgraphy
MY favourite image out of of them all is either of the photographs taken with the peach in mid air. I took these by finding an old mangled peach on the floor, throwing it up near to someone in the air an photographing their reactions. This photograph below was taken on an Ipod touch in a portrait fashion and required a great deal of timing and a few attempts in order to keep the reaction of the people and the peach core in frame. Below is the most successful.
Diagonal aspect
some photographs taken with this in mind:
Street photography of my own:
Evaluation:
This set of images is poor. although it captures some interesting things, I haven't done a particularly exceptional job. I think next time, I should try and care less about taking photographs because the main reason that this set of images look as if I didn't care to look at what I was photographing is because I was admittedly nervous about taking close up photographs of people I don't know. Mainly because I wasn't sure how they would react. Especially the man in the bottom left who was huge and looked particularly intimidating. And although, I get on with strangers and people in general, in my experience, people tend to not really like being photographed at all. So, as a result, I didn't look at the screen of my phone as much as I should have when I was taking the pictures in an attempt to not be noticed. This meant I was not trying to set up a good photograph.
My favirote of the photographs is the one above.