Skip to main content
Read page text
page 14
10 MUST READS the game between the photographer and reality. Photographs become memories of playing, a resource of self-examination, and signs of an act which highlights the photographer’s intention to interact with reality with the aim of walking the route to the self. A crucible of cultures and traditions, a crossroading of identities and experience, the city has always offered much to the astute collector of images and anecdotes. Emotional archaeologies and epiphanic visions are the privilege of the street wanderer, imparting lessons in historical memories cultural geographies and social dynamics. “The city is the teacher of the man” remarked the Greek poet Simonides.2 Master and companion, the city – with its streets, arcades and squares – has taught its citizens to observe, judge or sympathise with life around them. The veracity of Simonides’ aphorism very closely reminds one of those incisive preambles or decalogues of urban advice which, since the nineteenth century, have insistently shaped European and American culture. Since then, cities and streets have been regularly constellated with wanderers and curb-side bards who have found inspiration, founded commentaries, fostered tales and created images on the road. In Europe, cities such as Paris with its boulevards and galleries, embodied a privileged sphere for the investigation of modern society and its economic and cultural ascent, giving birth to the enigmatic and solitary figure of the flâneur.3 In the United States, the urban environment not only became an 14 | Street Photography as a Route to the Self
page 15
CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY opportune place for the analysis of society, but also constituted the soil in which democracy, freedom and self-reflection were cultivated. Walking became a cathartic and edifying experience, producing poems such as Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman – paeans to liberty and mobility which influenced generations of writers and artists to come.4 Urban and extraurban roads therefore become symbols of first-hand experiences and, borrowing from Harold Aspiz on Whitman, “an opportunity for personal and spiritual renewal.”5 Since the nineteenth century, the city has thus emerged as a catalyst of vigorous experience; favouring real-world encounters and firmly opposing stasis and constraint with motion and authenticity. The possibilities offered by the urban environment have not only been internalised and endorsed by literary and poetic traditions but also been a great attraction to photographers. Since 1839 – the date of that first and famous daguerreotype, Boulevard du Temple, that Mary Warner Marien designates as the first street photograph6 – street scenes and urban scenarios have become sites for exploring both the world and the self, and street photography the most felicitous and serendipitous practice. Although often described as a companion genre to documentary, but one whose social predicaments have a provisional rather than permanent relevance,7 street photography should instead be considered as the visual expression of the interaction between photographer and world in free-fall. To say it in photographic jargon: street photography is the authentic tracing of ephemeral encounters, passing reflections and sudden intuitions onto light sensitive paper. As Russell Ferguson has noted, for photographers the urban environment turns into MANILA CASTORO | 15

Page Text

View plaintext

10 MUST READS

the game between the photographer and reality. Photographs become memories of playing, a resource of self-examination, and signs of an act which highlights the photographer’s intention to interact with reality with the aim of walking the route to the self.

A crucible of cultures and traditions, a crossroading of identities and experience, the city has always offered much to the astute collector of images and anecdotes. Emotional archaeologies and epiphanic visions are the privilege of the street wanderer, imparting lessons in historical memories cultural geographies and social dynamics. “The city is the teacher of the man” remarked the Greek poet Simonides.2 Master and companion, the city – with its streets, arcades and squares – has taught its citizens to observe, judge or sympathise with life around them. The veracity of Simonides’ aphorism very closely reminds one of those incisive preambles or decalogues of urban advice which, since the nineteenth century, have insistently shaped European and American culture. Since then, cities and streets have been regularly constellated with wanderers and curb-side bards who have found inspiration, founded commentaries, fostered tales and created images on the road.

In Europe, cities such as Paris with its boulevards and galleries, embodied a privileged sphere for the investigation of modern society and its economic and cultural ascent, giving birth to the enigmatic and solitary figure of the flâneur.3 In the United States, the urban environment not only became an

14 | Street Photography as a Route to the Self

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content