Railway Sleeper

“Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth” - Pablo Picasso

My yo-yo week continued in a predictable way today. I can't go into details but I found myself in an impossible situation at a teleconference, stuck firmly between the proverbial rock and a hard place, an extremely big boulder of granite on the one side and a huge lump of cast iron on the other. Both seem to be immoveable - and I've got very stressed out in the process. That's for the journal, to remind me of this day. I'm hoping it might come to be seen as the ultimate low point. It's hard to imagine the situation getting worse from here.

But enough of that nonsense. I took this shot on the train this morning, a little guiltily I have to admit, but I wouldn't post if it was disrespectful in any way. This chap looked very peaceful and dignified in his sleep. Aside from the fact that I've got nothing else to post today, it illustrates one of the joys of street photography (in the wider sense of the word). It's about the excitement of opening an image up and finding details in the frame that you never noticed when you first took the photograph. Yesterday, it was the rather incongruous wrist-bands which added a subtle tension to the picture. Here it is my own reflected presence, about which I was completely unaware at the time.

I think I make the shot a lot more interesting, and this could actually form the basis for an unusual series of its own, trying to find different ways of making reference to myself in the frame. It's another element to be absorbed into my growing 'street' consciousness. In deciding whether this could legitimately be called a street photograph I did a bit of research into the accepted definition of street photography. I hadn't realised just how much debate there is over this matter. Street Photography means many different things to many different people. Although definitions don't really matter that much to me - other than from an academic standpoint - the debate is very fascinating.

In the Essay: Why Street Photography is not Documentary Photography, Evangelo Costadimas writes ...

"The unescapable hallmarks of Street Photography are that it is enigmatic and quirky and more often than not surreal. That it creates relationships within the frame that may well not exist in reality. Relationships between strangers or between people and their surroundings. It achieves this through intentional juxtapositions, a combination of selective framing and exact timing".

"Street Photography does not concern itself with the Truth. Rather, if it is a good Street Photograph, it is a lie that might make us realize something about life, or some truth. As per Picasso’s quote, Street Photography involves creating a fictional narrative that allows the photographer to express him or herself. Street Photography has therefore, more in common with Art than it does with journalism".

This resonates deeply with me, as do these words from Nick Turpin ...

"More than anything Street Photography is an attitude, it is an openness to being amazed by what comes your way, it is unlearning the habit of categorising and dismissing the everyday as being ‘just the everyday’ and beginning to recognise that extraordinary, beautiful and subtle stories are occurring in front of you everyday of your life if you can see them. I actually think you can be a Street Photographer without a camera and without making photographs, it is really just the more insecure Street Photographers like myself that actually have to record and show off their ability to ‘see’".

"How many other forms of photography essentially have ‘wonder’ at their heart? That’s what makes Street Photography almost a spiritual process for many because it is so personal and so akin to a kind of photographic enlightenment. Street Photography helps me understand the nature of my society and my place in it, I do it more for myself than I do for an external audience and like Buddhist enlightenment I do achieve a happiness through gaining that understanding. I have certainly experienced Matrix- like moments of revelation when in a public place I see things, moments just reveal themselves because I have put myself in the right situation for it to happen."

It is really only this year that I have embraced street photography and it's hard to believe that before then I had no confidence to use my camera in public spaces. If you yearn to have a go and are lacking that confidence yourself I urge to just get out there on the street and do it. My experience is that very, very few people have a problem with the camera. Most don't even notice. There is only one way to develop that confidence. It really is worth the effort.

Finally ... is this then a street photograph or not? I really don't know and it doesn't really matter. I like it and it's led me into this discussion. I was all set for a sociable evening in on blip tonight but the internet went down for three hours! It's just not meant to be!!