Vivian Maier                                                          

Though Maier was born in America it was in France that she had spent most of her youth. This was in fact because her mother was originally French she would tend to return to the country often. Her father was Hungarian, however census seems to indicate that he was off the scene from a very early age. Maier lived with just her mother and Jeanne Bertrand, who was an award winning photographer, and it is obvious as to what sparked the interest in photography.

  Sometime at around age 23, whilst still in France, Maier began to experiment with a modest Kodak Brownie Box camera which seemed to stand almost as an obstacle between the image that she wanted to capture and what was actually produced. It had only one shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial and was apparently very inaccurate.

   Several years later Maier returned to the US and became a nanny however in her leisure time she continued her street photography. She soon moved to Chicago where she was employed by a family that would stay with for most of her life and here she was able to continue to indulge in her passion of photography not just by upgrading her equipment but she was also given a private bathroom in which she would hang negatives.

Maier stayed with this family however she herself did not ever marry nor have children and nor did she have any close friends. It is thought that this could be due to her being far too absorbed in her passion, some however would call it an obsession.

In this particular photograph Maier has captured an image with a close moment between a small child and two members of her family. This natural shot shows the everyday life of the people in the city whilst encapsulating a moment of closeness between the child and carers. The holding of hands strengthens the link between the three people and makes the viewer feel close enough to feel the warmth and trust between the three however the fact that the child is not looking at the camera creates a distance between the viewer and the group.  

As you can see in my own photograph I have captured a similar warm and tender moment between a mother and child. In contrast with Maier's photograph which has a group of three this particular image that I have captured shows a warm and intimate moment of just two on a cold winters night. A similarity between the two however shows that both of these images have a warming, caring and trusting feeling as both images have a vulnerable child whose hand is being held securely by a mother or carer. In the image that I have presented the main factor that makes the biggest difference is the fact that the child is looking at the camera in my photograph, this creates a closeness letting the viewer into the intimate moment between mother and child making the viewer feel closer to it however in Maier's photograph the child looking away creates more distance making the tender moment more secluded between the group.

Weegee was a press photographer during the 1930's and 1940's, his black and white street photography depicted real life injury and death as he was known to follow the emergency services to capture a scene beating the police to the incident therefore some of his images were quite gruesome showing people wounded and dying.

Robert Doisneau was another famous photographer, and though he was given other contracted work to do i.e. vogue magazine, his preference remained street photography, he won various prizes for his photography and his work appeared in numerous exhibitions.

Last and final role of film that I needed to shoot so I thought I would go back to North Ormesby market in Middlesbrough as the last time I went it started to rain and everybody started to pack up, although I didn't use any of these shots I was quite impressed with myself afterwards as I stood in the middle of the market taking photographs and all eyes seem to be on me but it didn't bother me.  An old gentleman then approached me and asked what I was doing but when I explained that I was photography student, he just smiled and walked away.

contact sheet 10

contact sheet 9

I went back to Middlesbrough town centre but due to the cold weather it wasn't that busy, I saw a gate at the end of the alley and decided to take a photo to see whether I could capture a different angle, I believed it worked well and after gaining a second opinion from a third year student I decided to enlarge it and use it as one of my final five prints.

Jacques Henri Lartigue started photographing in 1902 especially people in motion and objects in flight, a famous photograph of his titled 'avenue du bois de boulogne 1911 shows the relationship between the pavements and fashion, this photograph shows where the road had almost disappeared leaving the woman prominant in the photo as she walks against the traffic which is amost out of the photo.

Street Photography Assignment – Evaluation

Introduction

Following the brief for street photography  I researched the subject on the internet as it was a completely new area for me , the best way to define the subject is as the following:

‘Street photography is a type of documentary photography, it uses strong graphical lines, reflective surfaces and shadows and features people in public places such as streets and parks to capture a moment or tell a story in a single frame’.

I do feel that I am the least experienced in the class, however, I am prepared to give it my best shot and see how I get on.

Camera and Equipment

I started by borrowing a Pentax k1000 35mm film camera from the college store with a 50mm lens which is recommended by various street photographers as it means  you to get close to your subject.

It was the first time that I used a 35mm film camera but the light meter made it pretty simple to use, though manual focusing slowed my work down a little.

It wasn’t practical to keep borrowing a camera from the college store and returning it the next day I therefore purchased a Canon camera from ebay (which unfortunately  didn’t work properly)  I then bought a Canon Av 35mm film camera with a 50mm lens, this is a nice camera with few settings and aperture priority but I decided to stick with it to complete my assignment. 

Getting the right equipment was important, however, it delayed my work by a couple of weeks so I had less time to complete the assignment.

The second film that I loaded into the camera didn’t load properly and both my money and time were wasted taking shots, as I didn’t realise till I developed the film that it had all come out blank, lesson learned – always ensure that the film is loaded correctly in the camera and follow the manual for your equipment to fully understand the equipment and its settings before venturing out to take photographs as you may not get the same opportunity again especially when you are doing street photography and most shots are taken at the spur of the moment.

Developing and Printing

Working in complete darkness was quite awkward at first, the most difficult part being to wind the film onto the reels, which if not done correctly could mean that parts of the film does not get developed properly and if the film is underdeveloped and the correct mixture and timing is not followed then you will get dark underexposed film  - as I found out when I printed my second contact sheet.

As I never done any previous manual developing and printing I wasn’t familiar with the darkroom equipment and enlargers.   I printed a number of photos but wasn’t happy with the quality, I then experimented with the equipment  i.e. enlarger lens, aperture settings on it, turning the filters on and off and finally looking at the picture in detail to fine tune the focusing and being able to see the grain in the picture and doing a number of test prints with different exposure times to produce better  prints. The results were much better than my previous prints as I realise it is important to do a number of test prints at different aperture settings and exposure times in order to get the right definition and contrast you want in a photo.  Most of my prints were done on glossy paper, however, I did finish some on a pearl effect paper which also gave a nice slightly matt effect.

Study Materials and Research

I looked at several books in the library including ‘Street Photography, from Atget to Cartier-Bresson’  and also followed the street photographer Eric Kim but found it easier to study using the internet as there was more study material and photographs to choose from. 

As I was a person that always said to other people that I don’t believe in Facebook etc, I did struggle with the concept of creating a blog and actually using it as a place to display and share my work which is why most of my work wasn’t uploaded till late on, I originally made notes on Microsoft Word before copying it on to my blog, however, this is changing and hopefully will improve.

Conclusion

Overall I have found this assignment a nice challenge, it has made everyone go ‘back to basics’ and go through the process of film photography right through to development and printing using basic equipment and my photographs  have turned out ok but am happy with the content as my first assignment.

The theme of street photography was different for me and made me develop my confidence as a photographer as well as approaching people and taking street photographs without fear.  I feel that this is reflected especially in the last two contact sheets as I managed to stand in the middle of the market with people looking at me and some people finally approached me to ask me what I was doing and I responded positively.

asian street photography

Contact sheet 2

My second contact sheet - managed to get closer to people but unfortunately the film was underprocessed and the container was dirty leaving the negatives darker with some marks.

Contact sheet 1

This was my contact sheet for the street photography assignment which was the first time I had done something like this.

I did find it strange taking photographs of people without permission and quite intrusive but eventually got used to the idea as we had to shoot 10 rolls of 36!

street photographs - Dubai

I took these photographs whilst on holiday in Dubai earlier this year, not sure if the same laws apply in Dubai as the UK

Dubai at night

This photograph was taken whilst travelling on a boat cruise in Dubai.

overview of streets in Dubai

These photographs were taken by me from the hotel bedroom window in Dubai.

places to see in Pakistan

street photography research

research

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Henri Cartier-Bresson
Born	(1908-08-22)August 22, 1908 Chanteloup-en-Brie, France
Died	August 3, 2004(2004-08-03) (aged 95) Montjustin, France
Alma mater	Lycée Condorcet, Paris
Occupation	Photographer, Painter
Influenced by	André Lhote
Influenced	Stanko Abadžić, Robert Doisneau
Spouse(s)	Ratna Mohini (m. 1937–d. 1967) «start: (1937)–end+1: (1968)»"Marriage: Ratna Mohini to Henri Cartier-Bresson" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson) Martine Franck (m. 1970–w. 2004) «start: (1970)–end+1: (2005)»"Marriage: Martine Franck to Henri Cartier-Bresson" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson)
Children	Mélanie
Awards	Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1981 Hasselblad Award in 1982

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "life reportage" style that has influenced generations of photographers who followed.

Street Photographs by Danny Santos II in Singapore, putting a street into action when it starts to rain.