A Thinking Street Photography Site
We need to avoid doing the same thing and look out for or even create the next paradigm shift.
We need to think about how we can add value to our work.
It’s all about win-win.
What’s our ROI on this?
We need to think outside the box here.
This is inevitable – it’s because of creative destruction.
We need to synergize our mission and vision.
Let’s pluck the low-hanging fruit for now and circle back to this discussion later.
Camera: Contax TVS II
Film: Kodak BW400CN
I happened to chance on a folder I tucked away a few months back.
I remember not being satisfied with the pictures.
I though the colours were a bit off.
Then I looked again and decided they’re pretty okay after all.
This is Hong Kong.
This is Hong Kong.
This is Hong Kong.
Sometimes a door opens.
And we see ourselves as we truly are.
Camera: Contax TVS II
Film: Fuji Superia 400
The sites are being cleared even as I’m typing this.
So, this is going to be memory soon.
Mong Kok:
Admiralty:
Causeway Bay:
Camera: Contax TVS II
Film: Kodak Ultramax 400
I’ve been to the various protest sites over the past three weeks at various times.
They keep changing.
They keep changing simply because it is the nature of the protests.
They require a constant infusion of people, energy and creativity, of which Hong Kong has in abundance.
Hence, I kept raising my camera to my eye.
These were taken at Mong Kok about three weeks ago.
There is a need to see, understand and document.
What Hong Kong wants – that’s not very difficult to understand.
The writing is very clear.
What Hong Kong will get, no one knows at this point.
We don’t really have a bird’s eye view.
All one could do is to keep asking.
And be willing to do the hard work.
Sacrifice, toil and labour.
And pray that something good will come out of it.
The work of waiting and keeping watch goes on.
And there’s always hope.
History will be the judge.
All images were taken with the Contax TVS street camera and converted into monochrome from a single roll of Fuji Superia 800 film.
This was what I saw at the Hong Kong Government Offices at Central.
You could think of this as a temporary exhibit, as an example of public art.
Is there an artist claiming responsibility for this?
I’ll let the wall speak for itself.
All images taken with Contax TVS, loaded with Fuji S 400 film.
Every day, we do the same thing.
We wait.
We’re waiting for something to happen.
Or for someone to come along to give us the answer.
We wait for that big transcendental Other, that Godot, to come along.
We have a choice, we think.
We choose.
We consult.
And hope for the best.
And then we eat.
And after all that, we’ll be merry.
For collectors: some images from this post are available as open edition prints.
Street photography can be an obsessive endeavour…
One day, I was walking around and I saw this.
And I did another take just in case.
And I went, oops, oops, there’s a bit of condensation on the lens.
Hence the slight foggy effect.
And again, after wiping the lens.
Hmm … the left leg is slightly out of frame.
And again, after zooming out with my feet …
Better, I think.
Check out the stark clarity of the pavement.
Hmm … that’s a Minolta Af-C camera loaded with Neopan 400CN.
Let’s see what my Contax TVS camera loaded with Venus 800 would look like.
Here we go again, after I’ve rummaged through my bag for a bit.
And again.
One last time, I promise.
The image reminds me of a line I wrote in a poem: “It takes ten years to cultivate a tree, a century for a human being”.
It’s from a Chinese proverb “shi2 nian2 shu4 mu4, bai3 nian2 shu4 ren2”.
The things we do in the name of art …
I’m not sure if this is considered street photography, but I suppose so, if street photography is about scenes that are found rather than staged, about scenes that say something about the interactions between human beings and their environment.
For those interested in film photography: all photographs are taken with Contax TVS, loaded with Superia Venus 800. That’s the gear I carry these days. This post is inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Anecdote of the Jar”:
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
A quick Google search will reveal various possible readings to the poem, so I’ll suppress my inner poetry geek as much as I can.
I’ll simply say that at the minimum, the poem is about the relationship between human artifacts and nature.
The take-away philosophical point is that a man-made object placed/installed in nature changes nature.
Is nature a rubbish dump, a depository of things no longer useful?
The joker in me tells me it’s a supermarket shopping cart that has lost its way.
Nature is nature.
A journey into what nature is is man-made.
Is nature a resource we exploit?
I am reminded of the following lines from Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology’ , about how our instrumentalist attitude to nature (and everything else) reduces everything into a “standing-reserve”, as means for other ends:
Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. (Heidegger “Question Concerning Technology”)
We’ve learnt to frame nature.
And in our arrogance, we forget it is nature that frames us.
Perhaps we’re the ones putting obstacles between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and ourselves.
Why street photography?
1. Because it is always work in progress.
2. Because we’re all looking for something.
3. Because we’re waiting.
4. Because it deals with the mundane, and reality can be mundane.
5. Because it’s another way of looking at ourselves.
6. Because it is artful waiting.
7. Because we’re born to say “Let there be art”.
8. Because it’s a way, like any other.
I am reading Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford.
It’s a meditation on the value of manual work. I’m on page 79 at this point and it’s one of those books I’d like to read slowly, because there are so many wonderful insights that are conveyed in a very accessible manner which encourage me to stop and just think.
Take this sentence for example:
If different human types are attracted to different kinds of work, the converse is also true: the work a man does forms him.
I am a literature geek, pure and simple. That says a lot about who I am already. Neat, simple and a bit obsessive.
So I have chosen the kind of work that suits my temperament.
The work then further deepens my temperament.
I am sure many of us could say the same thing.
But I’m at a point where something else has come into play – my interest in street photography using quality compact film cameras.
Street photography relies on serendipity. It celebrates ordinary, everyday life, and it’s something to think about as to keep myself from going insane during banal moments (such as when I am at the back of a really long queue at a crowded supermarket checkout.)
And it introduces a kind of variety into my work I suppose. (The Chinese characters at this shop entrance means “anarchy”.)
I was standing outside the shop composing with my Contax TVS and a passerby saw what I was doing.
“All these crazy shops,” he muttered to me, and walked on. It looks like a Japanese ramen place as far as I could figure.
So, yes, I suppose it’s a little bit different from my day job. Here, I’m standing at the entrance, aiming my camera, waiting deliberately for the right moment.
What am I doing, and what am I looking for as a street photographer? I admit I live within myself too much.
Maybe part of the work of street photography has to do with getting away from myself.
Sometimes, it’s good not to be myself.
I look into the backs of trucks.
I look at other people at work.
I look at stuff.
I am intrigued by the strangeness of other people.
I imagine myself wearing their clothes. Then, I imagine myself wearing their skin.
And I look some more, and am sometimes not quite used to what I see.
Hong Kong Lucida 