That thing Matt Said...

I wish that I had become a “Concerned Photographer” like some photojournalists. It’s not that I don’t love street photography, but I think most of us would like to make a difference with our work, even though as a street photographer, its almost impossible in the first place. - Matt Weber to Bryan Formhals

When I started taking pictures, documentary was the mode that influenced my approach and that of most of my friends. Our models were the FSA guys, or Atget, every bit as much as Winogrand, Friedlander or Arbus were at that time. Maybe even more, since the newer guys were so hard to emulate without imitating. I've said in other contexts that I'd never heard the term "Street Photography" until I subscribed to Flickr, and that's true. HCB was a brilliant photographer, but he was also, importantly, a photojournalist. Just walking around on the street photographing was interesting and produced the occasional show stopper (and as Bryan says in the interview, it was a place to train your reflexes) but it didn't seem "serious" enough. So I get it when Matt says that thing about Concerned Photography, and if anything it tells me that we both came from the same generation. I was forever inventing projects and trying to pony-up documentary themes - whether they were anthropological, historical, sociological or journalistic. Anything to focus my attention and link me back to reality - to recording what was actually there in front of me.

Church interior. Alabama or Tennessee. Walker Evans, 1936

But of course, that wasn't really what I was doing. What I was really trying to do was get great pictures that looked like reality. And there was never a doubt that, whatever Roy Stryker may have been thinking, getting great images that evoked the aesthetic of Flaubert was what Evans was after (well, he said as much), and that Russell Lee was sure as Hell aware that his flash-lit shots inside of people's houses were the essence of the surreal, and that Ben Shahn was exploring a randomness that foreshadowed Winogrand's later aesthetic far more accurately than anything HCB had done.

Amphitheatre, county fair, central Ohio, 1938. Ben Shahn

The concerned photography thing is about changing the world, but it's rooted in the idea of documenting the world that needs changing. And it turns out that whether you're trying to change the world or just make great pictures, if you bother to include the world in your pictures at all, the documentary thing pretty much takes care of itself.

Children taking bath in their home in community camp. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939. Russell Lee

Fast or Slow?

As I sit here avoiding starting on some work that actually involves some monetary remuneration, I'm thinking about the camera I just bought (well, as a matter of fact, my mother-in-law bought it as a birthday present for me) and why I decided to get it. When given the opportunity to buy a new camera (and one that was under $1500) I was torn between going small and digital, in particular the new Fuji X-100, or larger and film, to a Mamiya 7. I ended up opting for the Mamiya, yet remain sort of torn.

The decision is a perfect manifestation of a kind of yin-yang I've struggled with forever. Be impulsive, quick, reactive, and technically simple; or be slower, more careful, more contemplative, and more visible. I have always been much more the former than the latter, and not just with photography. But I always want to be the latter. I like those kinds of photographs and have frequently been guilty of trying to make them with my Leica. A few years ago a close friend bestowed his Hasselblad 500C on me and though I've gotten fond of it, on many occasions I still feel cramped by the square format, and even more frustrated by the comparatively deliberate shooting style it requires (staring down into the viewfinder, focusing with its little magnifying glass, which still barely helps when I use the fabulous 50mm Distagon lens my friend also put on permanent loan to me). But however clunky and difficult I find it, I've also noticed that it works. That for the amount of film I put through it, there are a surprising number of decent pictures. It forces me into a completely different place as a photographer. I haven't found a way to make a discreet picture with this thing. If people don't acknowledge me pointing the camera at them, it's because they're choosing to ignore me, not because I'm quick or agile. I'm almost never comfortable with the interactions I have with the strangers I photograph (when I use the camera to make photographs with people in them) - I'm really not a touchy-feely person, and I'm acutely aware when photographing outside my socioeconomic stratum that I'm essentially a voyeur.

So the hope is that the Mamiya will bridge a gap. It feels much faster than the Hassy, and has a beautiful, bright viewfinder. It's quiet. We'll see. The lamest of rationalizations I came up with for going medium-format was that in a year, if I decide it was a mistake, the Mamiya will be worth more than a digital camera that holds its value about as long as a Coke stays fizzy.