Apocalyptic Street Photography - Stop Bitching

Stop Bitching!

I find it all a bit bizarre frankly. The universe has took it upon itself to throw up one of the most aesthetically diverse backdrops to shoot photography against since World War 2 and I hear people on social media bitching that they have nothing to shoot. (I’m referring to those who are able to get out with their cameras not those who are self isolating obviously).

If I hear the the words ‘I’m bored’ lobbed into a sentence one more time …

I tell you who is bored. The rest of us. Listening to it.

I actually heard one person say the other day ‘I’m bored of shooting people with masks on’.

What the actual fuck?

A Hopeful Soul with a Camera

A creative person void of an idea is not a creative. They are a person without an idea. A photographer who cannot use the limitation of time and place to their advantage is not a photographer. They are a hopeful soul who just happens to have a camera.

If you’re bored you’ve stopped looking.

We need to shoot our time. Now! With pure objectivity. If you want to bring a little compassion to the table all the better. But we need to be shooting this stuff.

‘Gary my old son, are you telling me you like the pandemic?’

No. I'm not. No more than Don McCullin liked the Vietnam war or the lonely, poverty-rife streets of Leeds and Bradford in the late fifties. Didn’t stop him from photographing what was in front of him though did it? We want the pandemic to be over for sure because people are bloody well suffering. That’s a given. But from a street photographer's vantage point isn’t there an urge to record what is happening? What it looks like? Surely there must be?

We need to Wake up and start Clicking!

How can we get bored with looking and seeing what is going on? The reality is if we are looking, and seeing, we can never ever get bored. It’s impossible.

We are literally in the midst of one of the most visually significantly happening since the blitz.

Deserted streets. Masks. Queues of people lining the streets to purchase milk. I was in Oxford street a few months back and it was like a scene from the handmaid's tale or Orwells 1984.

I’m not saying it’s nice. It absolutely 100% fucking isn’t nice.

But we need to wake up and see what has been put in front of us.

Photography isn’t about changing the world around us it’s about changing how we’re looking at the world around us.

G

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If you are easily annoyed I’d probably stay well clear XXX

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