civilized ku # 208-11 ~ see people walk, eat, ride .... or, crazy niggers doing crazy shit

Conseil D'Etat ~ Paris, France • click to embiggen
Walking the streets of Paris • click to embiggen
Sidewalk cafe ~ Paris, France • click to embiggen
Walking the streets of Paris • click to embiggenBefore going one step further -

READ THIS FIRST

A comment left yesterday by Sven W stated/asked:

I'd be interested on your thoughts on "classic" B&W street photography. Most people - including new photographers - would recognise & appreciate it's Real World credentials. What about you?

Now some of you might be inclined to ask what the comments on Peter Hugo's pictures have to do with Sven's question regarding street photography .... well, let me explain -

Re; street photography - I do, in fact, "recognize and appreciate it's [sic] Real World credentials". I also have no doubt that, if I lived in a city - say, like Paris, I would most likely be inclined to expend most of my picturing efforts to making street pictures or, at the very least, some variation thereof - I say, "variation thereof", because I would certainly be making color street pictures as opposed to the "classic" variants which tend to be made in B&W.

However ... one of the things about street photography that gives me pause is the tendency on the part of some practitioners of the genre to engage in a type of voyeurism that makes me rather uncomfortable. By that I mean picturing, up-close and personal, extreme and embarrassing moments of awkwardness, weirdness and so on, pictures that I would label cheap-shot pictures.

To my eye and sensibilities, there is all the difference in the world between an up-close and personal picture of extreme and embarrassing moments of awkwardness, weirdness and so on and one that depicts the exact same referent within a greater context - AKA, a broader wide-angle view - of the street. In my mind, that approach make the picture less personal and more general. Less about the person, more about the "situation".

That said, and more to the point of "crazy niggers doing crazy shit" - when making and viewing street pictures (as well as any other genre for that matter), no matter how you slice it, you bring personal knowledge, pre-conceptions, biases, and ideologies to the process of perception.

So viewing-wise, where Sebastian Boncy looks at The Hyena and Other Men and sees the "RACIAL CONTEXT THAT THIS WORK TRAVELS IN", I see people doing whatever they can to get by in a far less than perfect world. I see people possessed by a sense of basic human dignity and control, even in the face of a less than perfect condition. I see a basic human sense of family and personal connection - albeit, in this case, a sense of "tribe".

What I don't see is black or white, AKA, nigger or honky, if you will. But, if you're looking for is a divide that Hugo's pictures travel in, I see the "CLASS CONTEXT THAT THIS WORK TRAVELS IN" - not the divide between black and white but rather the divide between well-to-do and poor, AKA, the haves and the have-nots..

But that perception is the result of my personal knowledge, pre-conceptions, biases, and ideologies.

In any event, my preference in street photography leans heavily to those pictures which tend to give the people therein - and really, when you come right down to it, isn't so-called street photography much more about people on the street rather than the street itself? - space to live and breath with whatever their idiosyncrasies on exhibit may be and, consequently, leave them with at least a modicum of personal dignity intact.

Comments

[J]

I tend to agree with your views on this one Mark.

[Jimmi Nuffin]

…Should have never used the "N" word, Blov.

I'm damnear positive that people would like to respond, but they can't even get themselves to type anywhere near the infamous "N" word.