A Thinking Street Photography Site
These are images taken with the same camera (Minolta AF-C), with a single roll (Fuji Neopan 400CN), over a week or two.
There’re just so many environments, and so many stories waiting to be told.
There’s the early riser.
The joy of a youthful busker.
The necessities of life: public laundry.
There’s discipline and teamwork.
Political consciousness.
Work.
And work.
(For collectors: open edition prints from this post are available here.)
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 …
1. Because of the colors.
2. Because you could visit the past and re-open closed doors.
3. Because they’re a good investment – digital cameras have built-in-obsolescence but film cameras are built to last.
4. Because they’re perplexing.
5. Because what appears wrong can be right.
6. Because what appears right can be wrong.
7. Because film photography has a different flavor.
8. Because everyone else is using digital and I’m just being stubborn.
9. Because it’s another life.
10. Because of their rugged beauty.
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 do have a routine, and go to the same few places time and again.
These are all taken within a week or so on the same roll of film, with my Minolta AF-C loaded with Kodak ColorPlus 200.
My usual haunts are Shamshuipo and Wu Kai Sha beach.
That’s a cooking stove by a village house along Wu Kai Sha beach.
They say the best camera is the one you have with you.
I have cult rangefinders such as the Canonet QL 17 GIII, Yashica GX and the Leica M6.
But nowadays I’m in a point-and-shoot and snapshot-aesthetics phase.
So it’s either a Contax TVS, Olympus XA2, or Minolta AF-C.
These are to me signs of life, these ropes and bricks, arranged as if for display.
Sometimes, I strike up a conversation with people with my broken Cantonese.
This gentleman runs a BBQ site at Wu Kai Sha beach. He was trying to convince me to book a BBQ pit for my family for the coming weekend and as a bonus, he would throw in a few complimentary pieces of cuttlefish.
At Shamshuipo. That’s one of my favorite pit stop. Whenever I walk past, I’d try to take a shot.
It seems we oscillate between desire and labour all the time.
We discipline ourselves to make sure the plumbing works.
Again, at Tsim Sha Tsui.
There’s so much happening here.
I don’t mean shopping and eating, though there’s lots of it too.
Sometimes we’re bored while waiting for the bus…
But there’s so much to see …
I suppose it’s about framing and movement…
There’re so many people at work.
I figured I could fire off two clicks before they notice me …
I simply love the lomography effect with Fuji Superia 800 film.
Thanks for reading today.
Though all the images here are created with film cameras, they are of course scanned from negatives and ultimately, on display here are digitised images on a computer monitor.
I’ve been experimenting with colours lately, having bought a dedicated pigment ink photo printer and various Ilford and Harman papers.
It really does make a difference whether the image is printed on glossy or on matte, etc. And of course, I am going to frame them up, now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on photo-safe tape.
Images like the one below work on both matte and gloss. On matte, there is a gritty look which fits in with the grungy seat-of-the-pants attitude of street photography.
A colleague who used to paint commented that the matte print looks more like a painting than a photograph. He said there’s a Caravaggio framed-by-darkness quality to it.
On the other hand, the glossy print has what I think of as a “Nirvana in Carnegie Hall” effect… a refined “fine art” treatment to street photography.
I suppose glossy is good for portraying drama in ordinary scenes.
And now that I’ve got all of these, I’m now thinking of what I should do next. Where is this taking me?
Direction 1: Teaching and Research
A fascination with photography (and film cameras, I must admit) is now changing the way I work. I find myself making connections between photography and creative writing, between the history of art and literary history. Is there a homology between creative writers and photographers?
What would a university course on the connections between photography and literature look like?
I am now thinking of creating a course that is practice-based, one that encourages students to go out and explore HK culture using literary and non-literary writing and photography, and getting them to think about what constitutes valuable cultural knowledge.
I’ll probably throw social media (such as a WordPress blog like this) into the mix, getting them to think about the use of social media for sharing one’s work. And what is meant by “sharing”? What, really, is being shared? And what is “work”?
Direction 2:
This has all to do with the situation of one’s work, I suppose. Digital images live in one’s hard disks or are displayed on sites like this. Now that I have the physical prints on hand, perhaps the next step is to work towards a gallery exhibition.
It’s a kind of curating, I suppose, setting up one’s work for viewing …
What kind of logistics and various other considerations would this involve? There’s a learning curve ahead of me …
What is becoming clear to me now though, is that this blog is like a thinking-in-progress technology, a depository of raw ideas… much like a building under construction …
Thanks for reading.
Hong Kong Lucida 