Mapping Myself

Where do I fall in the history of photography? I am not delusional, I know my photo career is not one to be compared with the greats. But it is important to know how your photographs fit in with the rest of “photo history.” And again this is just for your personal knowledge. For example, if you like making landscape photographs, do you know all of the photographers or ideas concerning the landscape that came before you? Are you extending the ideas or practices (no matter how incremental) or are you just unwittingly repeating what has already been done?

Myself I like to take pictures in the street but I do not consider myself a “street photographer.” While most experienced photographers would say that street photography can be anything at all, many photographers have a notion that, as Magnum photographer  Richard Kalvar states:

” street photography is grounded in real people, doing real things and my observing them, reacting to them, and trying to squeeze them into a rectangle.”

By the way, the above quote comes from a workbook accompanying an online tutorial on street photography put out by Magnum Photos. It is pretty good but at $99.00 it is a bit pricey. But lots of good information.

Anyway, back to defining one’s photographic practice against what has already been. I have read a lot of photo history and also the history of street photography and I find that my practice differs in that people are not necessarily central to my street photographs. My main concern is the limitations of vision. How what we think is reality is just a distortion of what is really out there. Thus my latest series on reflected scenes / landscapes. They could be termed street photography by virtue that the reflections depict scenes in mostly urban areas, NYC to be specific. In other photographs I deliberately block the view with some extraneous form and use shallow depth of field to make it somewhat mysterious. Meanwhile the main action is in the back.

It is important to understand how your photo practice maps to what came before you. And to know that, you have to read up on the history of the medium. So read up and then go forth and shoot knowingly.