Knowing Strangers

Knowing Strangers:
Street photography is a form of photography that has allowed me to explore an aspect of New York society in a very organic and genuine way.  I find the philosophy behind this technique is that it strives
to disrupt nature as little as possible.  As Henri Cartier-Bresson expresses, it is wandering without a destination but with a “premeditated alertness for the unexpected detail that will release a marvelous and compelling reality just beneath the banal surface."  HCB, a major inspiration to me for this project and in photography in general, approaches his art through humanistic eyes as he reaches out to other human beings (though photography) to try and get a glimpse of their authentic realities.  I have certainly kept these ideas in mind with this project yet I also wanted to turn this idea on its head.  I wanted to frame these images in a way that manipulates the realities of the people that are essentially caught in the frame of my photo.  Of course with street photography, the actions and emotions can never be planned thus making this project a challenge in capturing a certain tension between the strangers I was documenting.  Essentially what I was striving to do with this project was to write a new reality for these strangers that I alone have created with my photo and in turn speak to the human relationships that surround us on a day-to-day basis.  I am attempting to say that I “know” these strangers caught behind my camera and that I have discovered something unexpected and new about their relationship. Yet these assumptions that we can “know” anyone just through a surface, external synopsis is of course ridiculous and another aspect that I tried to question through this project.  I tried to focus on two subjects separated by a third factor within each photo.  Framing is very important to me with this project, as well as capturing a particular mood of tension mixed with ambiguity and humor.  With street photography, your mind and eyes have to consistently be open to any and every opportunity to capture a perfect moment.  The randomness of these people, situations and locations are things that I will always see as beautiful and perfect within these photos. To say that we really “know” anyone based on looking at them through our own eyes (or lens) is irrational.  However, the more we attempt to make sense of other people, through photography or other means, opportunities will naturally arise in which we realize that the stories we create in our minds about others are essentially all assumptions.  This fact however does not deter me from taking these kinds of photos and attempting to create a connection with other human beings.