What could be more ordinary than a stretch of public pavement? When did you last stand and watch a stretch of public pavement or a street corner?
If you take the time you will see that the street can be a stage for the most amazing dramas, you will see that comedies, tragedies and romances unfold in full public view and that the street is a theatre. This is the world of the Street Photographer where the ordinary and everyday is very often more remarkable than any imagined fiction.
Working with small quiet cameras Street Photographers hover, follow and stake out the actors of this pedestrian play. Waiting with a rectangle and a shutter button to edit the chaos and flux into something beautiful, poignant and ordered that can be held up and studied forever.
I think of Street Photography as a revelatory act because through the act of photography and in particular photographing the small details of life, the world we live in is revealed to us. The pictures provide a rare mirror in which to see our own society, working, earning, shopping, spending, texting, eating lunch out of a plastic triangle.
I have had a lot of faith in this way of working, even when it was not as popular as it is today. I find these street pictures to be more relevant than the images from any other photographic strategy. They appear simple but I find them harder to make than any of the big commercial or editorial projects I work on. Street Photography is the greatest challenge in photography, there is no equipment to hide behind and no crew to assist you, but it is also the most satisfying experience to pluck a moment of wonder from nowhere.
Watch Nick talking about street photography and his collective ‘In-Public’ www.in-public.com here:
Nick Turpin is one of London's most acclaimed street photographers and will be leading our weekend of Photographing London on the 10 & 11 September. Although now sold out, new dates will be announced shortly.
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