I’m bringing Photos, mostly to you a week early this month as I want to share the film mentioned in my last Dispatches post. Enjoy.
In a previous life as a musician and underachieving record label owner, I was lucky enough to do some memorable things. Radio, TV, and TEDxWarsaw appearances were all experiences worth writing home about, as they say. Nevertheless, whenever such things were recorded, something would inevitably go wrong.
On The Frozen North’s hilarious appearance on popular Polish morning TV show Pytanie na Śniadanie, our 4 minutes of fame were beset with technical issues. We understood we were invited to discuss our new record and perform. They seemed to want to discuss the intriguing cross-cultural make-up of our band (4 Poles, an Irishman, and a Scot). We inevitably did neither to any great degree, and ended up performing less than 2 minutes of an 8-minute song, before cutting to an ad for a popular probiotic. Terrible - so much so that I turned it into a tight-five stand-up bit to amuse my photography school students.
A half-decade later, TEDxWarsaw, an organisation I had belonged to for most of my time in Poland, was celebrating its 10th anniversary with the original team’s final event. Pop-up Books, a band I had formed not long before a global pandemic put an end to it, was chosen to perform. As a warm-up, we had played only one previous gig a few nights before, so this was our first real show, and it’s fair to say our performance on the TEDx stage wasn’t our best, suffering as we were with an attack of the jitters. Nevertheless, the standard TEDx recording of the set would be useful to push us on and give us a lovely document of the performance, right? Nope. For TEDxWarsaw 10, it seems the team had hired a 10-year-old to run the sound desk. At times, the audio fades, at others it disappears. There’s errant feedback, weird delays. The whole thing is a disappointing mess. This might be the 1st time I’ve shared it widely in almost 6 years. Still, at least we look pretty cool!
So, you can see why I might be a little wary of finding myself in front of the camera, setting myself up for some ego-failing, vanity-pricking disappointment. It was for this reason, then, that when my friend and colleague Jaap Arriens asked if I’d like to work with him on a film about my street photography for his YouTube channel, I was desperate to emerge from the adventure with something I could be happy to share far and wide without shrivelling up inside with acute embarrassment.
And wouldn’t you know, we managed it. Jaap’s film follows me through the afternoon of the 19th June this year at the Corpus Christi parade from St. John's Archcathedral in Warsaw through to the Piłsudski Square. I work, we chat, and you can see some of the photos made that day. I hope you will have a look and enjoy it. I had a lot of fun making it with Jaap.
Afterword: Some scattered thoughts
The film began as b-roll to garnish an interview on street photography that I filmed with Jaap in his back garden. Throughout the afternoon, I think he began to see the possibility of a second film that would precede the interview, and by the end of the day, it was clear this fly-on-the-wall doc would come first and in a month or so, the interview will appear.
Using a Leica and wide-angle lenses, I get pretty close to my subjects, which has trained me to have a sixth sense to do all that I can to stay out of other photographers’ viewfinders lest I ruin their shot. It was an unusual feeling, then, to be filmed as I was photographing. I had to repeatedly fight the urge to escape Jaap’s lens.
Given my inherent shyness, it was an eye-opening experience to watch the footage back and see the confidence with which I move around in the crowd. It reminded me of the afternoon in Paris when, for 30 minutes and from some distance, I watched Richard Kalvar work on the Place de la République. For street photographers, I think there is certainly a benefit to seeing the way in which others work. No doubt, many of us have taken a lot from this famous short video of Winogrand. I certainly have.
It is also interesting to see the reactions, or - for the most part - lack thereof, of the people I was photographing. As I passed, Jaap followed behind me, and you can see very few people even acknowledge that I was there. One of the big anxieties many new street photographers have is that they are intruding or may be angrily confronted, and here you can see that fear is largely unfounded.
In all, I’m delighted with the result of the film, and I can’t thank Jaap enough for suggesting we collaborate. Certainly, it’s very useful for giving my ego a wee tickle, though when Marta sees me watching it - again - she punctures any hint of pomposity by referencing this moment of animated genius.
The reason I wanted to make it, though, is much the same as for this newsletter, my website, my teaching and my mentoring, all in the hope that it may be useful for other street photographers out there, or those wanting to give it a try.
And Finally…
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Photos, mostly is free to read, however, paid subscriptions and donations help me keep making photographs and writing. All labour required to publish Photos, mostly is undertaken by me alone. As I strive to better live by my anti-capitalist beliefs, I will donate 10% of all income to anti-capitalist, leftist or progressive causes or organisations.
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I'm partial to some of that Tri-X 400 if you're asking. Thank you!
Congrats!!!! Looking forward to viewing the video (I just liked it on YouTube and shared it with myself so I can get back to it when I have the chance to sit down with it).