Looking at a Thing in a Bag

Apr 8, 2006 · Comments
surrealism

5DWII - day five. So, what have we learned about Landscape this week? “It’s just a medium” - JA, or a vessel that we can pour whatever we want into. I’ve mostly been reminded that it’s just another unhelpful label although I have been enjoying making some bad landscape pictures. As labels go, I certainly prefer the term street photography but that’s because I have a very wide open view of what street photography is and can be, whereas some people think it died with HCB or Winogrand. A term with little or no baggage would be ideal but unlikely. Joining ‘urban’ to ‘landscape’ only makes it worse.

Possibly related posts:

• August 7, 2004: Lartigue
• June 1, 2008: Disney and Other Hyenas
• May 19, 2008: Summer Street Photo Workshops
• August 28, 2007: 3 Views on TV vs RL

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Old Comments

The comments from the previous WordPress blog.

ed nixon: Let’s say ‘street photography’ could be described, not to say defined, over an n-point space, with ‘n’ being something less than or equal to 10 but greater than or equal to 4.

Which n of your images would describe the largest possible space that would fit over your notion of street photography?

…edN

ed nixon: And then which (same) ‘n’ images from ‘the wild’ (not created by you, but by others) would do the same thing – fit over your notion of street photography?

In this thought experiment, the space will be, in one sense or other, larger or smaller or the same in size – whatever ‘size’ might come to mean. Or there might be comparable facets (subsets of x images) between the two spaces, but not on other facets.

…edN

admin: Having struggled to understand the first question I find the second leaves me even more confused. I’m reminded of the health practitioner who asks if 10 is no pain, how much pain do you have at the moment? I tend to shrug and then pick a number from the air, depending on my mood.

Most of my images fit into (or over?) my notion of Street Photography but then I’m not even thinking about various bits of commercial work I have done. What does it tell you if I say 8, 9 or 10?

If I have understood you correctly then answering the second part seems impossible. I think I need to see pictures. An infographic so I can see the concept and then some examples so we can start filing. I was thinking Diane Arbus might be an interesting person to start with but maybe it would be better to use someone who isn’t normally associated with SP at all.

Gary