When Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia’s capital in August 1968, Josef Koudelka was one of the first on the scene.
That everything has happened by chance might seem an odd way to begin a discussion with a photographer whose focus, intensity, precision, and sheer will are evinced in every aspect of his being, not to mention in every project he has ever undertaken. And yet this is where Josef Koudelka has chosen to begin our discussion of the work he did that one extraordinary week in Prague, August 1968, when “the big Soviet army invaded my country, everybody was against them, and everybody forgot who he was—if he was a Communist, if he was young, or old, if he was anti-Communist. Everybody was Czechoslovak. Nothing else mattered. Miracles were happening. People behaved like they never had before; everyone was respectful and kind to each other. I felt that everything that could happen in my life was happening during these seven days. It was an exceptional situation that brought out something exceptional from all of us.”
As an artist or writer with print aspirations, the quest to get a book published can be long and often fruitless. Concepts too niche for mainstream publishers might stand in the way of bringing an idea to life, and there’s always the possibility of the next big thing simply not getting snapped up – remember how many rejections JK Rowling got before someone invested in the multi-million-pound empire that became of Harry Potter?
In the face of publishing adversity, screenwriter and photographer Stephen Leslie found a different way of ensuring that his proposal made it to the page. Seeking to release SPARKS to the world, a compilation of over 20 years’ worth of street photography with a twist, Stephen found his saviour in Unbound, a UK-based publishing company established in 2011.
Turkish photographer Ilker Karaman has created ‘In Pursuit Of Myself’: street photography of strangers that he uses to explore ideas of self-discovery.
A prominent feature of the Ankara-based photographer’s work is the contrast of shadows and silhouettes in public spaces, as well as the use of double exposure and angular perspectives. Like many artists, Karaman uses photography as a medium for reflection. The title of the series consequently gives his purpose away: to find oneself—and perhaps to find ourselves in the world around us. When asked in an interview why he uses street photography to explore an intimate theme like self-discovery, Karaman explains: “To be aware of visual beauty around us is not so easy for us in the modern world. We live in [a] hurry and want to be faster to fulfill our responsibilities, and then there is no time left to discover our environment”. We neglect the beauty, he continues, even if it’s right in front of us. “I want to visually show people what they have come to ignore in their daily lives on the streets, through my own presence within them.”
5Susan Meiselas’ Retrospective Provokes Questions About the Ethics of Photojournalism
For more than 45 years, Susan Meiselas has blurred the lines between photojournalism and fine art photography, documenting subjects ranging from a group of girls in New York’s Little Italy to the Salvadoran Civil War.
Much of Meiselas’ work provokes uncomfortable but familiar ethical questions about encounters between artists and victims of civil and human rights abuses, or merely those who have less to gain than the photographer. The breadth of work in Susan Meiselas: Mediations, a retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, provides an opportunity to consider these challenging issues.
Photojournalist and photo editor J.M. Giordano has served in the Army, photographed a story on druids in the UK, worked in Prague, and been beaten by the police while covering the Freddie Gray protests (he called it an “occupational hazard”). The Baltimore native returned to the U.S. following 9/11 and has built his career on photographing hyper-local stories for the Baltimore City Paper that are often neglected by the national and even bigger local news outlets.
In the Summer of 2013, Giordano set out to cover a spurt in homicides in a tragic moment of Baltimore’s history. Five years later, he returned to the story to revisit some of the earlier subjects and celebrate how the community had worked towards reducing the violence.
7It’s not easy, but anyone can do it. 13 tips for street photography beginners
Go down the same street a billion times, and every day it’ll be different. Different weather, different people, different traffic — which is why you might want to consider having a camera in hand whenever you leave the house.
Whether the person behind the lens is your favourite Instagrammer or legends like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz or Vivian Maier, street photography is all about capturing spontaneous, candid moments that are happening around us.
That’s not easy. But so long as you have a camera, anyone can do it.
