How to approach street photography
In the first of an ongoing instructional series, photographer Alex Frayne gives CityMag a lesson in street photography, how to photograph homeless people and sets budding photographers some homework.
The question I’m asked most often by aspiring photographers is a good one because the answers might constitute a template for other areas of the art form. The questions are about street photography and are often couched in terms of “how do you approach strangers to take pictures… etc”.
The question should be less about “how” and more about “why.”
Why are you compelled to hit the streets with your camera in tow, to jump into the ocean of humanity that seethes and heaves day and night, relentless and unyielding and horrifying and beautiful? The answer is yours to seek, and everything starts somewhere.
For me the interest in the streets started not on the streets but in a house: the “House of Psychedelia” owned by the late hippie Royce Wells of Fullarton.
He was living in filth and was served an eviction order, which he assured me he would stridently defy. I shot a series of images that made local and national news. ABC’s Spence Denny visited the house and discovered it to be bereft of running water. A local man paid $40,000 for vital repairs and a unit to be built behind the main house. Water once again flowed. Royce seemed happy. And then he was bitten by a possum and died of an infection.
I ruminated in the days following these events and became more aware of those whose mattresses were the concrete footpaths and garden beds of the city. And so the ‘why’ component was in place. Why, in one of the richest countries on earth, do some souls struggle to find a home sweet home?
I said to myself: I will find the answers. I will use my art form to interrogate this grand question. I will create art to ennoble those who live on the margins and who are shunned, who didn’t get ahead and who could not just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
I spent five years photographing my OVERSEERS OF STREETS series. It did not earn me a single dollar, but I learnt about my art form, I learned about shooting under pressure, shooting fast but most importantly, I discovered the answer to my original question of ‘why’.
Some practical advice for street photographers: be honest. If you’re shooting unhoused people, be honest and curious. Ask questions to sate your desire to genuinely know about a person’s circumstances.
If you’re shooting a series, say, about city vendors of arcana, marginalia, board games or vintage clothes, then grab an email address and forward the vendors the pictures as a token of your gratitude. If you’re fascinated by subcultures and decide to approach a group of goths or eshays, ask questions that allow the subjects to talk about that subculture.
This will put everyone at ease and avoid the trap of you being seen as a white-coated research scientist looking through a microscope at exotic insects. Ask them if they have gatherings. If they do, ask for an invite to the next one.
If an unhoused person asks for something in return for your photographs, adopt a position of open-mindedness.
They want food? Buy them a hot meal. They want a bus ticket? Catch that bus, pay for them, stay for the ride and talk to someone else on the bus whom you find interesting.
Street photography
Tech
My favourite lens for this kind of work is the 35mm prime. I find the 28mm too wide and the 50mm too close. I avoid zooms and long lenses because they’re too intimidating and intrusive. For medium format shooters, a good option for street photography is an old waist-level Twin Lens Reflex camera such as a Rolliflex or Yashica. Think Vivienne Maier.
For analogue users, shoot monochrome. I use Kodak Tri-X for its supreme latitude and dramatic shadow rendition.
Homework
To improve your photography, do not simply Google ‘street photography images’. This is a lazy and unoriginal approach.
Instead, turn to the great artists in allied media to hone your aesthetic. I would recommend documentary film as a great place to learn about the “look” of en plein air work. Find Wim Wenders’ seminal mid-80s film about Japan and Ozu, Tokyo Ga.
Seek out Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil or the work of the brilliant Polish filmmaker Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz. Read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London and Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye. Be fluent in Joan Didion.
Alex Frayne is a photographer based in Adelaide, South Australia. He is a published author of Distance and Desire, Adelaide Noir, Threatre of Life and Landscapres of South Australia.
