Conceptual Street Photography
I just finished a course at the Ontario College of Art and Design. For people familiar with Toronto, they would know it as that building over by the art gallery that looks like a giant arts and crafts table with coloured pencils acting as pillars to hold it up. I think it’s safe to say that the building has earned minor celebrity status in the Toronto architectural scene as I see it included in photo blogs and vacation pictorials all over the social media landscape. If I’m not mistaken, it also has a reputation for being a reasonably good school for budding artists. For me, it will always be the place where I took that Drawing the Human Figure course at a time when my dog was dying. Drawing is not something I'm good at, so I was already feeling a little vulnerable. The dog just sent me over the edge.
Depsite the dog, OCAD is not my usual go-to place to study photography, but the course that I just finished, Conceptual Photography, sort of peaked my interest. Most of my studies have been around the technical aspects, such as lighting and composition. Conceptual Photography, as it turns out, is one of those vague, artsy subjects where the participant is required to look within themselves for some form of inspiration. There was no examination of EXIF data here. This was squishy-squishy, how did you feel, type stuff. From day one, I knew this would definitely be poking at my comfort zone, but I was up for the challenge. Besides, the current pooch seems totally healthy.
Instructions for the course were relatively simple. In an effort to find a concept, I needed to reflect on my own personal interests and bring to the class some examples of photographers that I liked. My favorite photographer is Cindy Sherman so I dug through a collection of art gallery postcards that I have collected over the years and brought two (any two) examples of her work. Cindy Sherman, for those not aware, is sort of an anti-fashion, shock/schlock sort of artist. Her work is most often pop-culture inspired self-portraits that usually reference the pin up girl of the 1960s, or the femme fatale from old movies, however with a grotesque twist that could involve anything from a bruised eye to a horrific deformity.
The Art Gallery of Ontario has a fantastic Sherman work where she evokes the Old Dutch masters, perhaps Rembrandt or Hals. She’s made herself up as an old European peasant woman, who stares forlornly out to the viewer, not an unusual subject for the Renaissance period. The Sherman effect is her exposed and saggy breasts, front and centre in a larger than life poster, elongated and weathered to maximum effect. A couple of years back, the AGO had the brilliant idea of putting that photo in the same salon as the works of the real Dutch masters. What a treat it was to sit nearby and watch the reactions of the passersby. How better to re-experience a piece of art than through fresh eyes – especially eyes that were simply there to see some old religious works. I wish the AGO had left that exhibit at it was.
Chromogenic color print, 60 x 44" (152.4 x 111.8 cm). Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
Bringing Cindy Sherman’s work into the course went over just fine, as there is no doubt that she is a perfect example of a concept photographer. Along with this, however, I was also expected to have an idea in mind for the final project.
My initial thought, which failed miserably, was to do a study of the human eye. I thought about taking close up shots of an eyeball, while the subject was looking at a projection of an image. Whatever the image would have been, I wanted it to be clearly reflected in the pupil, and if possible, I wanted the eye to emit some sort of expression (maybe by way of a tear drop). The photos I wanted to reflect from the eye would have been current events – pictures that were instantly recognizable and which people were talking about today. I thought of using that Syrian boy who was photographed washed up on the beach in Turkey, and maybe Caitlyn Jenner on the Vanity Fair cover, and any others that ran within that wide spectrum.
When I presented this to the teacher, I got my first dose of tough criticism. “You’re thinking too much about the final image,” he said. “Photographing the eye is not original. What do you think you’re going to accomplish out of this?”
Wait a minute, I thought to myself. Isn’t this supposed to be one of those squishy-feely courses where everyone feels safe and supported?
In spite of having my idea torn apart, I decided to surge ahead with it. I called on a couple of friends and associates to model their eyeballs for me. I took the teachers advice and I studied up on the human eye. I got into the minutiae of how the eyeball works. I read up on pupil dilation, astigmatisms, colour variations and retinas. I do enjoy dumbed-down kernels of science as much of the next person, so investigating the inner workings of the human eye was interesting so long as I didn’t click on to any of the more serious scientific websites, but the whole effort wasn’t inspiring me very much.
I wanted cool shots and nothing more. I wasn’t interested in delving too deeply into this, searching for some Freudian-bullshit reason as to why I was exploring the topic, so I went back to my personal comfort zone, the technical aspect, and googled How to Photograph the Eye and found several articles with lots of helpful tips and tricks, all of which I took note of. Yes! I wanted the eye to be expressive. Yes! I wanted the colours to burst! I took note of what lighting to use, where to position them, what aperture worked best, etc, etc.
The subsequent photo sessions didn’t go as I had hoped. Lesson learned – projections are not easy to photograph. Even with a tripod, the act of capturing the reflection of a reflection is near impossible. Even though the projector is projecting a still image on the wall, it’s essentially light, and light is not standing still. Therefore, at slow shutter speeds of about 1/40th of a second, I was getting nothing but white light in the models eye– all the while putting my models through torture in asking them to keep their eye still for such long periods of time.
It took a bit of trial and error to realize that it wasn’t working and it seemed that the only solution was to print medium sized copies of the photos that I wanted to reflect. Now the task suddenly seemed more daunting - or at the very least, a major pain in the ass. Finding a place that could print high-quality images of the Syrian boy and Caitlyn was something that I didn’t want to do - especially when I wasn't sure if even that would work. I guess I could have cheated and played around in photoshop, but I wanted it to be real. I was getting frustrated – and quite frankly, a little bored with this project.
At the time I had just got back from Cuba and I was pouring through the three thousand-plus photos that I had taken on the streets of Havana. I have always had a thing for street photography, and as I’d mentioned in a previous post, I credit so many good photos from that trip with the fact that mobile phones were not a common thing down there. It’s not that everyone didn’t have one, because they certainly did – but with limited and expensive Internet connections, using them was a rarity. People were forced to interact with each other – sort of like they used to do here, back in the old days of Vivian Maier.
My gripe about street photography these days is the fact that you can’t take a photograph in a public space without someone being on their mobile phone. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say that we should ban that damn things because I’m tethered to mine about as much as the next person, but the simple truth is – they have made street activity a little less interesting. We don’t connect with our surroundings anymore like they still do in Cuba.
The message from the instructor in this course was to chase something that you feel passionate about. I wasn’t passionate about the eyeball. It was a lousy attempt at trying something that I thought might be cool – but also very cliché. So I chose to nix the eyeball concept altogether and to start thinking about the street photography thing. What could I say about these mobile phones? I could take more pictures of people using them, I suppose, but I must have hundreds of them laying around. And they aren’t very interesting.
I thought about what I originally brought for show-and-tell to the class. Cindy Sherman photos. While I profess to love street photography, I have an obsession with her. Why would I want to discuss her work in class when I’m so much more focused on street photography? Cindy Sherman is about performance. Whether it’s she or anyone else in the photo, there is nothing natural about those images. All of her shots are staged – which is the antithesis of street photography.
In class we looked at the work of several concept artists, and while most of them didn’t resonate much with me, there were a few who did. One was Sophie Calle, a French photographer who used to randomly select a stranger on the street and secretly follow them around for a while. Her photos didn’t peak my interest, but her creepy idea certainly did. Another artist was Jeff Wall, whose street photography-esque photos often employed models in seemingly morose situations or in action shots where something clearly just happened. He’s sort of the like Cindy Sherman, yet without the Hollywood glamour.
Sophie Calle, l’Homme au carnet of 1983
Jeff Wall. Milk. 1984. Silver dye bleach transparency (Cibachrome); aluminum light box, Image: 6 ft. 2 1/2 in. x 7 ft. 6 1/4 in. (189.2 x 229.2 cm),
The idea of doing something staged seemed like a lot of fun to me, but if it was going to be in response to these mobile phone people – something kept telling me not to break the basic rule of street photography, which was to keep it real.
The concept that I came up with was to have a model/actor try to interact with someone on the street who was using their mobile phone. The scenario could be just about anything, but I imposed a couple of rules. To start, the intention should always be to tell a story, even if that story isn’t what’s actually happening at that moment. And secondly, the mobile phone user must not know what’s going on.
I worked with several models over the course of four weeks, and each instance was met with varying levels of awkwardness and uncertainty. I not only had to deal with my insecurities about street photography, but now I had to manage someone else’s. It occurred to me that while I was expected to step out of my comfort zone for this class, what I was actually doing was asking other people to step outside of theirs. It's often pointed out to me that a big weakness of mine is my inability to direct my model. I agree with this feedback because quite frankly, I hate doing it. I'm sort of like Woody Allen in that way. If you want to be in my picture, then you need to bring your game. I'm too busy trying to get the shot.
Establishing the boundaries of the model became my first priority. I didn't want to impose on them anything that they weren't up for doing. We discussed the project and tossed around a few scenarios. We tended to stick to one idea as we wandered the streets of downtown Toronto, looking for places with decent foot traffic. We experienced several missed opportunities as we struggled to determine where each of us should be placed, and while the model searched for just the right expression. We also had to contend with uncooperative phone users, who, while they didn’t know they were being photographed, seemed to have the uncanny ability to veer into another direction or to put their phone away just as we were about to get the shot.
Dana worked with me on my first attempt when I wasn’t 100% sure how this was going to work. I opted for the safety of a street corner, in which she would hide behind a wall. My intention was to have her look frightened for her life, but the shot I ended up choosing looked much better where she seems angry. We just weren’t able to get a convincing frightened look on that day.
For Richard, I suggested a scenario where it would appear that the phone user was walking away from, perhaps after an argument. He was a master that day at getting behind people and looking angry and perplexed, and he came up with the brilliant idea of holding the door open to a shop for one unsuspecting participant.
In talking with Aleks, we came up with the idea to use a banana for a phone, and he was such a good sport about walking behind anyone and everyone. He didn’t mind the looks that he got – which I have to say, were few and far between because most folks on the street were fully entrenched in their own world, and their phone.
I treated my photos to an HDR effect in an effort to bring out a cartoon element to them. This was never meant to be my serious indictment about how the mobile phone is destroying our soul. This was just an observation and I thought that tongue-in-cheek would present it just that way.
The feedback was generally positive in the class, but the challenge would be that I take this further. The instructor wanted something shocking, which I was completely perplexed about.
In my last week of class, while walking home, I passed by the girl in a cage. In fact, I passed Dax while she was waiting for a bus and checking her phone, all while wearing an actual cage. I had trepidations about it, but I managed to get the nerve to introduce myself to her. (Feedback from previous street photography sessions has been that I need to be more forthcoming and to develop relationships with strangers.)
Dax was an OCAD student, working on a performance art piece that involved her going about her day to day activity for a week or so wearing that cage around her. As luck would have it, she needed photos for her project – and I needed her for my project.
I did just fine in the course, but I don’t think I managed to dig too deeply into my inner self with this project. It was fun. The photos, I feel, came out – fun. There is nothing overly brilliant here, but I’m content that I got a good first lesson on the art of concept photography - and perhaps I made a statement, albeit a rather lukewarm one.
See the rest of the images here.
