I had been thinking about this project for a while, but my eureka moment came while reading Art Photography by David Bate. As I moved through the history of pictorial photography, expressive realism and poetic documentary, and finally the works of conceptual artists such as Vito Acconci and Richard Long, something clicked, and I just understood what kind of photographer or artist I aspire to be!
While I have photographed people in urban environments for a year or two now, I am not sure if I aspire to be a street photographer in the prevailing sense. For me, shooting on the streets is not about matching colours, quirky coincidences, complex layering, or painting with light and geometry. Nor is it about assuming the often-pretentious role of the flaneur of modern life. Would I be thrilled to take photos resembling the works of a master like Saul Leiter in this day and age? I don’t think so! Do the highly stylised pictorial photos that flood Instagram for rapid consumption excite me? Not really. It now seems that I can resist all these aesthetically sophisticated photos with that simple, annoying question: So what?!
Having all this context laid out, for this project, perhaps I just followed the advice of Martin Paar, who I also met in one of my dreams few days ago (see his interview with Louisiana Channel on Youtube)! In Search of Elevated Moments of Coexistence connects me to the world in a deep personal way. And I believe my newfound excitement for taking my camera to the streets in any possible window within my hectic weeks, suggests that I may have found the subject that I feel strongly about, the subject that can make me obsessed with photography!
In Search of Elevated Moments of Coexistence is, above all, concerned with the interaction between the people on either side of the camera. All formal and technical photographic considerations come secondary to this central idea. And yet, the project is an homage to photography itself — for its intimate link to seeing and being seen, and for its inherent capacity to preserve traces of passing moments.
The process of capturing these impromptu portraits is fully transparent to the subjects I pass on the street — from the first eye contact to the act of photography. This transparency transforms what might otherwise remain a fleeting glance into something else: a brief, charged interaction between strangers — sparked by the presence of the camera and grounded in a momentary trust.