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3 What is Streetphoto of the Week? It’s an Art Exhibit, a weekly sharing of a single street photograph (or five) from around the globe, and sometimes there’s an essay attached giving the back-story behind the photographs. Every five years, the Streetphotos of the Week and accompanying essays issued in the previous 260 weeks will be published in volumes called: Giving Up Lent For Cake. But no worries, because Streetphoto of the Week promises to never try to sell you anything -- -- but instead to just sprinkle a little regular Tube Candy around -- -- Guerilla Art meant solely to get overworked folks like you to Stop and Smell the Street... *Streetphoto of the Week #105/ Operation Lawrence Free Spirit DreamScape: (and Three of its Original Frames)/ Lawrence, Kansas, USA A couple of weeks ago in the Middle of another Hot American Summer... Issued on July 15, 2008 *The surprising Heart of Summer BackStory to StreetPhoto of the Week #105:
I've been a global street photographer now for 30 years this month, and next year in May I'll have lived and worked out of my two Lawrence studios for more than 30 years. And in all that time I have never really photographed the streets of Lawrence. I've taken idle pictures while running errands or while teaching students the art of street photography in Lawrence's lively downtown shopping and entertainment midway. But in all my time here I've rarely if ever left the house with the camera in hand specifically looking to capture street photography. Something about not wanting to soil my own nest. Something else about needing the invigoration of a transcontinental flight dropping me into exotic lands to get me fired up. It's always something...
But then a couple of weeks ago during the last week of June in the heart of another hot American summer, with Massachusetts Street (our Main Street) closed for repaving and with me here on a short sabbatical away from the field -- off the streets for a bit getting healthier and thus jonesing to make streetphotos -- I finally broke down and shot Lawrence! It was only for five hours over a 4-day period, less time than I typically put in during any one day out in the world -- -- but it was a start... In order to accelerate saying what I wanted about Lawrence I decided to make it a Theatrical Street Shoot (rather than my usual In The Wild method) and so during the last two hours on the last day of the session I convinced a student Sarah (who convinced her two friends Miranda and Alexa) to allow me to depict them on the streets of Lawrence in flashy high heels, flowing dresses, big hats and cool umbrellas -- representing the free spirit of the place.
The little girl with the pigtails and yellow balloon was an unplanned and pleasant (yet somehow intuitively conjured) surprise. And her showing up on the scene capped a wonderful shoot whose intention was merely to supply me enough boldly-colored and boldly-active frames to build a single x16-image Lawrence Free Spirit DreamScape (see Streetphoto of the Week #105 b). But which instead also surprisingly provided me several good (and pointedly conjured) single frame street photographs (see Streetphotos of the Week #105 a, c & d). When we were done with the shoot (x12 locations in about 90 minutes) I took my three co-conspirators Sarah, Alexa and Miranda, -- all 17 years old and heading into their senior years in high school from the heart of their last carefree school day summers ever -- to Penny Annie's Ice Cream Parlor where I treated them to ice cream cones and milkshakes as partial appreciation for them allowing me to direct them around the city in those free spirit getups.
It was real Our Town -- -- -- Lawrence style. Laid back and simple with stiletto heels and subtle bling. Sophisticated, smart and just a little bit whimsical too -- -- -- with good times, yellow balloons, and home made ice cream for everyone...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #106/
Amsterdam Blue Concerto/
Amsterdam, Holland I rounded the corner off the Lijnbaansgracht (canal) and encountered three Amsterdam police officers standing there having a discussion on the sidewalk among parallel lines of Amsterdammertje (traffic posts) lining the street in the mid-ground and background. I stalked the police for a couple of minutes hoping some kind of other stimulating Amsterdam element would serendipitously wander or bike past. I made a couple of frames using passers by as accents -- but then all of a sudden one of the cops noticed what I was doing and took a step forward toward me with his hand outstretched in a halting gesture and he ordered me to stop taking pictures of he and his colleagues. Of course I immediately let my camera hang slack and then I took a couple of steps his way to meet him as I began protesting his request. "But officer -- my name is Gary Smith," I began, "and I've been an Amsterdam street photographer for more than twenty five years now and you know very well that you can't legally stop anyone from taking your picture in a public place." I was bluffing, because I'm not really up on the finer points of Dutch law concerning troublemakers like me taking pictures of the police, but I bluffed well and he bought it, his eyes shifting left and right as he spun the card catalog of his memory wondering about the validity of my confident assertion of legal rights. "Sure," I said, "if I refuse your request, you could probably conjure up a disorderly conduct charge without much worry. But hell -- -- -- the three of you are just out here doing your jobs, not doing anything improper in the least, so what would be the harm of getting a few photographs of Amsterdam's finest at work?" "But why us?," he asked me. "Well," I told him, "say an Amsterdam girl on a flowered Amsterdam bike peddles past you three working the street and past all those Amsterdammertjes. What a great Amsterdam composition that might make?" On hearing my unblinking confidence of their Dutch law and my opinion of hard working peace officers and my hope for serendipitous artistic composition and the rest of my overtly charming explanation for stalking them -- the cop broke out into a smile (all three of them did) and we all shook hands and I returned bemused to my original vantage point -- -- -- when all of a sudden in very quick succession, a car out of view to the right stopped, the driver opened his window and asked the policeman for directions, and the musician with the interesting decorated sitar case stepped into the frame and click ... ... ... I barely had time to make the image -- the exact type of defining Amsterdam image I'd been after ever since I'd rounded the corner a couple of minutes earlier and spotted the potentially bold arrangement of local elements and imagined the possibilities. It was one of those perfect moments I get out there, and so when the officer was done giving directions to the driver and he was returning to where the other police were standing, I stepped back over to them and showed them the shot on the playback screen on the back of the camera. They looked at Streetphoto of the Week #106 and each of them smiled, two of them laughed out loud, and then the lead officer (the one walking out of the photo on the right to give directions) shook my hand again -- and then he actually apologized for having disturbed me in the first place... "Wow," I thought to myself as I continued on my way down the canal...
*Streetphoto of the Week #107/ Notes on Being Evicted by Authority for Street Photography/ (A travelogue essay with several illustrating pictures and streetphotos) *Cambridge, Massachusetts, *Amsterdam, Holland, *New Orleans, Louisiana, *Cologne, Germany, *Soweto, South Africa, *El Salvador, Central America, *Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, * Peshawar, Pakistan, *Lawrence, Kansas Issued on July 29, 2008 (*I've always thought street photography should be a contact sport...) *Cambridge, Massachusetts: Summer 2008 A few weeks ago a student of mine named Sarah Stern got back to Lawrence from a summer shoot on the streets of Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts. She reported that while she was documenting a flavorfully colorful 18-wheel traffic snafu one day in Cambridge (see Photo Below) that she got herself evicted by the authorities for working the chaotic street too closely for too long. It seems the frustrated truck driver, stuck in his turn and being watched closely by police in case he took out the traffic light, became enraged at the sight of Sarah recording his gaffe, and began waving his arms and screaming at her -- and that's when police stepped in and evicted Sarah for creating a public disturbance while practicing street photography.
*Amsterdam, Holland: Winter 2008 In last week's issue of Streetphoto of the Week I told about how attempted evictions usually turn out for me. How I'm often able to communicate with the authority and come to a amiable solution – typically, but not always allowing me access. Like those three Dutch beat cops who heard me out and ended up granting me access just in time for me to be able to capture that sitar player sweeping gracefully through the emblematic Amsterdam street scene (see last week’s Streetphoto of the Week #106).
*The Flood of New Orleans: Summer 2005 For violent war torn or disaster-trashed streets, genial conversation doesn't cut it with the authorities -- so for those eventual obstacles to my outside-the-wire streetphoto access I always carry several helpful press passes and a lifetime practice of effectual media-to-authority schmooze. Since the months I spent photographing the streets of the El Salvador Civil War from 1982 to 1984, I've been both journalism and authority savvy and have never been stopped in 30 years of needing extreme access to one crucial circumstance or another. I used those passes and that gall and the desire for streetphoto access most adroitly during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to get past four major-league roadblocks to gain access to the Flood of New Orleans: the uniformed Louisiana State Police at one roadblock; the camouflaged Louisiana National Guard (x2 separate barricades – see Photo #2); and at the nearest to the flood checkpoint a group of seriously-focused guys dressed in black like SWAT and carrying the latest in high tech weaponry who I got past too quickly to identify, but who I took for either a city police, state police or federal Go team.
And when I got to the water's edge (where I eventually used the press passes to hitch a ride on an animal rescue boat expedition) I also had to identify myself to armed EPA officials mounting a flood water quality monitoring mission and I was even questioned by the unarmed EMTs waiting to treat rescued flood survivors, who also had been deputized by the controlling authorities to bounce infiltrating freelance pirate media like myself (see photo #3).
*Cologne, United Germany: Reunification Day: Oct. 3, 1990 Even when an authority stops me, I'm nearly always able to go over that authority's head to his or her boss and get where I need to go. An exception to that standard occurred on the night of Oct. 3, 1990, German and European Reunification Day in Cologne, Germany when I found myself accidentally-on-purpose caught between a huge angry mob of raging M-80-tossing German anarchists and about a hundred camouflaged and fully-armed German SWAT team members lined up shoulder to shoulder and set to defend with tear gas if necessary the colossal Cologne Opera House and its fancy rich Reunification night opera goers from the several hundred attackers. After an officer refused me access I used one of my press passes to get a Cologne police official standing off to the side to allow me to operate in the five-foot slot between police and police barricades where the M-80s were exploding as the angry protesters leaned over the barrier, swinging their hands through the air with obscene gestures and screaming obscenities. So I'm there working that slot for about 90 seconds, dodging taunts and the explosions and suddenly as I'm trying another shot I'm lifted a foot off the ground and I'm moving toward a break in the barrier where I'm lifted higher and thrown into the crowd. I landed on my feet and I turned around to see a huge German camouflaged trooper with gloves, shielded helmet and carrying a submachine gun walking back to his post who obviously hadn’t gotten the word from the police official who’d given me access and who had picked me up with his one free gloved hand by the collar and delivered me into the angry crowd, who surrounded me with fuming eyes and threatened to take out their fury on me – immediately accusing me of being a police plant. Well, the several press passes I quickly took out of my pocket came in more handy than they ever had before, because the authority had suddenly shifted from the police storm troopers to the closest 25 riled-up anarchists to me who where bumping up against me and accusing me of authority as I chose the pass that identified me as a (poor) American fine artist. They read the card and consulted amongst themselves for a moment and then the one holding the card handed it back to me and shouted out in German that I was OK, just an American Künstler (artist). The crowd stepped back and they brushed me off a little, shook my hand, and I even saw a couple of smiles. Then they rejoined their several hundred comrades and continued their volatile scolding of the reunified German opera rich. *Soweto, South Africa: Freedom Day Weekend, April 26, 2006 Authority is whomever is on the same street at the same time you are and who decides street photography ought to be prohibited and whom then decides to take action to stop you from taking pictures or to deny you access to get to where you need to go to get the pictures you're hunting for. It could be anything from a crazy homeless man under a bridge wielding a blunt club to the United States (not so secret) secret service. In Peshawar, Pakistan in December 2001 it was both the Pakistan police and army as well as whatever civilian street lord came rushing out of his store to greet me and then scold me as violating his space with my camera. In Rio de Janeiro it was the police and the over-officious department store security guards under the impression that photographs taken with their company's window displays in the background were prohibited. So there I found myself at midday in the slums of Seweto adjacent to Johannesburg, South Africa on the day before Freedom Day in late April of 2006, a place where gang violence was taking upward of between 15 and 35 lives each day. I'd been making some wonderful streetphotos and also making a lot of new friends, when I turned the corner and ahead of me next to a corner restaurant in a vacant lot were about a dozen young men playing an illegal game of craps on a wooden fruit box topped with an old weathered piece of plywood they'd salvaged on site. They were rolling the dice and they were leaning in to see the roll and shouting and groaning and occasionally there were cheers and expressions of winning and loosing. Under the conditions, I knew I’d shortly be stopped from taking pictures by the gang authority and that my press passes would be useless among such an outlaw posse (Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!) so I made as many shots as I could, hoping that when I'd be noticed I'd make it out of Soweto both in one piece and with my film intact (see Photo #4).
Well, when the lead gang member noticed me he came right over to me and calmly and politely asked me to stop taking pictures because, “If the police come past and see a white man in this neighborhood, their going to notice, and then they'll discover our game and there will be trouble for us.” “Might you move on down the street?” he wondered civilly, and of course I just as politely obliged because except for that time in Cologne, Germany – I generally knew when it was time to say when. Cops only put you under arrest (or apparently they sometimes throw you into a pit of furious anarchists) if you don’t comply. These guys (this authority) will make you dead, if that’s what becomes necessary… *Lawrence, Kansas: Summer, 2006 I have dozens of these stories of skirting authority in order to do my art, but those I’ve already spoken of will suffice as introduction to those times (aside from Cologne) when I somehow as a street photographer got myself arrested (not just evicted) for one thing or another. The first time was in El Salvador in the summer of 1982 and it was my most serious incident ever with authority. I had reported several times that summer from the rebel side of the front lines and had embarrassed the American Ambassador at a press conference earlier in the week with a terse question that left him no wiggle room for lies. I was, as accustomed, walking to work (from my apartment to the press hotel – the El Camino) and at a major intersection on the Pan American highway about a half mile from the hotel I was stopped by camouflaged soldiers that were waiting for me there in a parked Jeep. All four of them got out of the Jeep and leveled their Vietnam surplus M-16s at me and I raised my arms and then one of them bum-rushed me out into the middle of the intersection and forced me to lay prone, face down in the middle of the wildly converging traffic. Horns were blaring, bus fumes were noxious and men riding in the back of open trucks called out taunts as they whizzed past just feet from me and the soldier, who now rested the barrel of the machine gun square on the back of my neck – balancing the stock three feet above me as he watched the traffic hurtle by. We stayed that way for the longest time, he tormenting me in Spanish and me laying there thinking about death and wondering why one would find so many whitewall tires in a place so poor as El Salvador. It seemed like hours, the end of the barrel of the M-16 imbedding into my neck with its weight over time. But it was only about 35 minutes, and then they released me, taking the gun off my neck and all four soldiers mounting the Jeep and driving off in the direction of the Salvadoran secret police headquarters. Their mission was to scare the crap out of me, and it worked. I was scheduled to be leaving the country in 4 to 6 days, but I decided after that arrest that my work there was done, and I left the country early the next day instead. Having been denied access to an entire country by the intimidation – until I returned the following year to finish my work collecting photographs from the streets of Cold War battlefields. The second time arrested I was held was on arrival in Amsterdam that same year, fall of 1982. Four Dutch journalists had been murdered by the Salvadoran army for reporting from behind rebel lines a few weeks before my arrival in the spring of 1982, and the Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua stamps in my passport raised an alarm with Dutch immigration. So they arrested me in a calm and dignified manner and locked me up in a little cell (a cage, really) at Schippel Airport with mesh wire from the neck up and a little hardwood bench to sit on. They held me there for about 45 minutes until an agent arrived from The Hague to question me and decide weather I would be getting access to the streets of Amsterdam, my first attempt to visit a place that would eventually become my primary street photography focus and my beloved second home. He listened to my answers, went away for a few minutes, then unlocked the cage and let me go… Next came that seven-second arrest in Cologne on Reunification night in 1990 -- from the time he picked me up until I was dropped into that unruly mob. Then in December 2001 in Peshawar Pakistan and the Tribal Belt on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, I encountered several evictions from streets by street block-lords that I had no capacity to either negotiate with or ignore. Safety first, I always say… But it's the most recent time I was arrested for street photography that takes the cake for the oddest arrest ever in my career. But we also have a university here and with it comes a lot of uptight Greek houses whose discriminating ways naturally don't fit into the classless Lawrence vibe, but are tolerated because there are laws that allow that type of notion to exist and because one of the Lawrence credos is to live and let live. At the time I hadn't made much street photography in Lawrence because, as I've said recently in Streetphoto of the Week #105, I never really wanted to soil my own nest and because I typically needed the invigoration of a transcontinental flight dropping me into exotic lands to get me fired up for a shoot. But whenever I went for a long daylight hour's walk I always took the camera along just in case something amazing or at least compelling happened along the way. And so there I was, on the edge of the neighborhood near the beginning of a 15 to 20-block round trip stroll to go to the bank -- -- -- and then suddenly through a series of wacky misunderstandings and a crucial misinterpretation by an individual who had no authority but presumed she did, I was under arrest for doing my art. Under arrest while practicing ancillary street photography during a spur-of-the-moment errand in my own hometown! Under arrest in Lawrence, Kansas – Art City USA – when I was able to get through 60 countries including several dictatorial fascist states without accumulating a criminal record or (except for the Cologne eviction) even a scratch of any sort in 24 years since that 1982 face down on the Pan American Highway incident in Central America. And now I was suddenly and irrationally under arrest in my very own Lawrence, Kansas, USA. For street
photography!
“Isn't that rich,” I thought, and I told her as much, and then after a brief discussion I went over to a giant Oak Tree on the right of way to await the police. Sitting there taking an occasional picture now and then of the abandoned front yard, twirling my cane like a baton, reviewing in my mind the law that says I can make any photograph I want as long as I'm on public property, and belittling the absurdity of her thinking she can not only boss my camera around in public (Art City USA public, sister) but kick me off her sidewalk as well. And during the brief discussion we'd had the hysterical woman – the sorority president as it turned out, upset about bad singing by the new sisters during the practice or something and over-officiously trying to justify her existence by pushing me around – had called me creepy, suggesting without proof that I had sinister intent in making my streetphoto images. As if I'd been across the street with a 600mm lens stalking them from behind parked cars instead of just strolling down the street as I was. As if I were a pervert. Well, to make a long story short, the cops got there and after listening to both sides of the story (theirs from several crying young women), the two young policemen decided to issue me a ticket (even though I'd waited quietly there for 12 minutes for them to show up) for disorderly conduct, punishable by a $5000 fine and 30 days in jail. After I heard that, I took about 50 snapshots of me being ticketed, with the police never once asking me to stop because they knew they weren't allowed under law to stop me because I was still standing on a public sidewalk. My lawyer, who did the job for me in exchange for a small portfolio of photographs from the streets of Havana, Cuba in 1997, took the case into the prosecutor who immediately threw it out of court because, as my lawyer told me he'd put it, “No laws were broken here.” And besides that, my lawyer also told me, the prosecutor admitted to him that he'd gotten a good laugh out of reading in the police reports how during the brief conversation between me and the sorority scold I'd inquired of the young woman who was screaming at me for doing my art in public and trying to evict me from her sidewalk and calling me creepy, that I wondered who the f - - - she thought she was. In fact, I'd admitted to the police freely that I'd wondered that to her twice, before sitting down quietly against that giant Oak to ponder first amendment rights and the queer audacity of America's spoiled and pretentious elite when it gets out of hand... *In conclusion: *I've always thought street photography should be a contact sport...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #108/
Strolling Amsterdam Rose/
Amsterdam, Holland
*Streetphoto
of the Week #109/
Dog Run Pals #1/
Washington Square, New York, New York
*Streetphoto
of the Week #110/
Dog Run Pals #2/
Washington Square, New York, New York
*Streetphoto
of the Week #111/
Amsterdam Laughing Gallery UmbrellaScape/
*Streetphoto
of the Week #112/ Boston Harbor Fishing Trawler Bike-by
*Streetphoto
of the Week #113/ Downtown Gelato Vendor Maintenance Blowby
*Streetphoto
of the Week #114/ Boston Police Bicycle Motorcade * Attention Please !! Announcing the BRAND NEW www.Streetphoto.com (Don't make us send the cops!)
*Streetphoto
of the Week #115/ Out on the Streets in Maine
*Streetphoto
of the Week / #116, #117, #118, #119 & 120 Recently Finished All-Portfolio DreamScapes (x5) *Look for a special VOTE streetphoto DreamScape due out on election Tuesday, November 4 -followed by fresh images from the streets of Argentina and Uruguay for the next few weeks after that...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #121/ Vote! *The black and white (vote) check mark formed by images #8, #9, #11 and #14 is found most interesting when the viewer zooms in to identify its occupants...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #122/ Boston Bench-Napper Blow-by
*Streetphoto
of the Week #123 & #124/ Street Tango: Chapter One
*Streetphoto
of the Week #125/ Sleeping in Buenos Aires: Chapter One
*Streetphoto
of the Week #126/ Kissing in the City Buenos Aires: Chapter One
*Streetphoto
of the Week #127/ Nothing Left to Hide:Economic Solidarity? (We're All in This Thing Together)Montevideo, Uruguay
*Streetphoto
of the Week #128/ Drumming Up Some Enthusiasm(for holiday cheer...)
*Streetphoto
of the Week #129/ Street Tango: Chapter Two
*Streetphoto
of the Week #130/ Dismantling Time: Five Daily Flights
*Streetphoto
of the Week #131/ High Traffic in Buenos Aires: Chapter 1
*Streetphoto
of the Week #132/ Between a Bowling Ball and a Bed of Nails: Issued on the brink of the day Barack Obama became the first black American president and the day tyrannical mean-spiritedness and institutionalized incompetency were sent packing, not for good -- but at least for now
*Streetphoto
of the Week #133/ A very special guest Streetphoto of the Week from the studio of street photographer http://www.sarahsternphotography.com
The Road Ahead
Darian
Hay Day
To The Coop
Bad Day For Barbie
On the Prowl
Artist Statement: Sarah Stern- January 24, 2009
*Streetphoto
of the Week #134/ Maradona, the Simpsons & Che?: A Real 21st Century Head-Scratcher...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #135/ Colonia Flower Girl
*Streetphoto
of the Week #136/ Buenos Aires Street Sweeps: Chapter One
*Streetphoto
of the Week #137/Buenos Aires Wall-Scapes: Chapter One
*Streetphoto
of the Week #138a/ The Desperate Viewpoint of the Victims of the Flood of New Orleans * During the very week that the National Guard finally left the NOLA city limits, Streetphoto of the Week is proud to announce that two of its very own have made the big time!! After having a look at Streetphoto of the Week #138a, a nerve-wracking, eerie and horrible-to-think-about-even-now street view (floodwater view) of what the survivors of the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Flood of New Orleans faced in the aftermath, take a peek at a couple of other attached photographs from the same streetphoto shoot below. It was announced late last week by the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) that signed prints of both Streetphoto of the Week #138b (At the Corner of Katrina and Canal) and Streetphoto of the Week #008 (an encore presentation called Devastatingly Beautiful, originally published in this exhibition space on August 29, 2006) were selected to become part of the institutions permanent collection, addition's to it's Katrina Exposed Exhibition. Although attainment of master global street photographer Gary Mark Smith's artworks by major museum's permanent collections have been increasing of late, this acquisition by NOLA ranks among the most prestigious. And from Gary's point of view (a first responder after Katrina -- see: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/oct/01/volunteers_return_gulf_coast/ -- who by being on location became a victim of perhaps the most massive incompetence in United States history,) the inclusion of these particular images from this particular natural disaster at that particular institution in that particular place somewhat pacifies his continued ongoing anger and disgust at FEMA's criminal foot dragging . . . . . . . . . well, you know the rest . . . So, GMS and SPotWEEK say thank you and cheers to the very cool people of New Orleans, Louisiana and the good people who make art acquisition decisions at NOLA NOMA for the honor of standing with you through thin and thick. Also Announcing: Gary Mark Smith is the current cover artist on the ArtStew fine art website at: http://www.artstew.org/ , and look for an article about Gary and his unique artistic journey in the May 2009 hardcopy version of ArtStew Magazine, available on newsstands sometime in the middle of spring . . .
*Streetphoto
of the Week #139/ Montevideo Sidewalk Poodle Portrait: Sharing a Hairdresser
*Streetphoto
of the Week #140/ Kissing in the City Buenos Aires: Chapter Two
*Streetphoto
of the Week #141/ Buenos Aires Dog Walker Dream Strip
*Streetphoto
of the Week #142/ Buenos Aires Shape and Form Street-Scape Dream Strip
Press Here for Access:> http://www.myartspace.com/
*Streetphoto
of the Week #143/ Street Chess
*Streetphoto
of the Week #144/ War Time
The Short Story The Long Story The gunman had just told me in Spanish; if you take my picture I'll shoot you through your head. Well, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity --- a photograph with that Cold War anger in his eyes and his machine gun down my lens --- an M16 I'd helped pay for with my taxes leveled right at me. A once in a lifetime chance… By the time we topped the first hill on the San Salvador-to-Suchitoto road, the haze and fog had for the most part lifted. A few patches of ground fog still lingered bright white in forest hollows here and there -- illuminated by the emerging mid-morning sun and contrasted brightly against the surrounding dark green landscape. Most of the Road Advisories in the past had proven harmless. In fact, since it was easier for a freelance combat photographer to sell images of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) to the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) if all he had to do was drive down the road to an FMLN Road Advisory Checkpoint, pass out a few cigarettes while working, and then drive back to the Camino Real in the capitol for a payday --- the announcement over the radio by the guerillas of a Road Advisory typically made the eyes of the press corps sparkle. But things had gone very wrong a time or two in the past … Like the four Dutch journalists getting murdered by the Salvadoran Army in March 82 for being with (what those in US-supplied camouflaged uniforms deridingly called) los muchachos. And that time in Chalatenango the year before when the same UPI Television Network (UPI-TN) college I was with on the Guazapa run this morning and I approached the piled rocks and brush and whole trees blocking the road flanked by painted FMLN graffiti on the macadam expecting to perhaps meet and photograph and interview a squad of Guerillas (and make some money). But instead, as we were leaving the car with a white flag on the antenna and a banner across the trunk declaring us PRENSA: No Dispare (PRESS: Don’t Shoot), wondering where everyone was, we were showered with a mortar barrage that for certain would have ended us both right there if not for the concrete drainage trench we’d pulled up next to and dove into that shielded us from the shrapnel whizzing within inches all around and above us. Wonderful little inventions, those Salvadoran concrete drainage culverts, I thought to myself as Credence Clearwater Revival sang unnervingly about a Bad Moon Rising on the car radio --- --- and just then --- --- as we rounded a corner--- --- the driver turned off the music with a flick and declared barricada --- --- and the day’s adventure in global street photography was about to begin. The typical Guerrilla barricade lay before us at the other end of a short 350-yard straightaway as our vehicle (with a similar white flag and media banner configuration attached to it as we’d had at the Chalatenango mortar barrage incident) slowly crept to a stop -- the three of us all coolly waving our friendly intentions out open windows of the car. The roadblock was the usual piled rock and brush flanked by FMLN spray-painted graffiti on the road and seven very real and heavily armed FMLN soldiers pointing their weaponry our way. We all got out of the car together, two of us armed with cameras, and as it turns out we all (even the driver) knew the lead soldier from past encounters (Enrique?), commander of that small squad on the roadway and probably a dozen or more other soldiers hidden in the hills rising up on both sides of the road flanking the roadblock and no doubt right then still pointing their grenade launchers and machine guns at us out of sight.) It was a nervous roadblock, a very nervous roadblock, ours being the first vehicle of the morning to dare approach, disregarding (in our role as the media) the broadcasted Road Advisory threat of cierta muerte (certain death) if anyone challenged the FMLN and tried to practice regular commerce between San Salvador and Suchitoto --- hasta nuevo aviso (until further notice). With my camera still hanging at my waist from my neck, my hands on my hips, I took a measure of the six fighters as my friend met the commander on his side of the car and after a hand shake and familiar greetings led him up the road fifty feet or so, his television camera on his shoulder, gesturing with his other hand and chatting --- talking that senior officer on the scene into an interview for his audience in Europe. At that point, despite the lingering tension and because everyone had lowered their guard just a little bit (and more importantly their machine guns,) I felt comfortable enough to get to work. I had a 200-mm lens mounted on my 35-mm Canon film camera for the ride out and was too close to several of the Guerillas to use that. However, before changing the lens and simultaneously handing out cigarettes to everyone to evenly introduce photography and friendship into the tension (as was my typical warzone safety tactic) I spied a striking soldier off to the side and I got hold of and raised my camera to get a quick shot of him before reaching into my vest pocket for the 50-mm lens, and I was focused and good to go when he realized what I was doing and suddenly and alarmingly snapped his rifle into place -- angrily barking at me in Spanish that; If you take my picture I'll shoot you through your head. Well, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity --- a photograph with that Cold War anger in the subject’s eyes --- his machine gun down my lens --- an M16 I'd helped pay for with my taxes that had been sent to El Salvador and captured by the FMLN leveled right at me. A once in a lifetime opportunity (if I live). A once in a lifetime photograph … I figured he was bluffing; knowing killing me would have caused him immeasurable grief with his commander, who I knew. So I took the picture just as he finished saying the words su cabeza (…your head.) --- lowered the camera --- raised my hands very high over my head (so he knew I was serious) and I looked him right in the eye, winked a little bit and smiled --- and then I asked him coyly in Spanish; Hola, cómo está usted hoy (Hello, how are you today?). And at that point he burst out laughing. And to this day I'd wished I'd had just a little more courage, enough balls (los cojones) to reach down to grab the camera (I damned near did!) and capture him laughing with his machine gun down my lens so I might display that image right next to the menacing one I already had in the can --- hanging off my neck at my waist on film inside my camera --- three feet or so away from my nervously twitching trigger finger attached to my still highly-raised hands … NOTES: about the photo War Time 2. War Time was one of several entries from the El Salvador series that resulted in Gary Mark Smith’s selection in 1991 as one of four winners of the very first American Photo Magazine competition; The National Photographer’s Career Photographer Competition (8700 entries nationwide). 3. In 20 years of teaching Street Photography to habitually-arrested gang members and at-risk youth – an exciting alternative to stealing cars and gang banging as a way to relieve the boredom of growing up on the edge – the first day of each seminar I’d give a slide show about what I do behind my camera. And the first slide I’d show them would always be War Time. Firstly* it gave me a chance to give a lecture to these over-Ramboed-up youth about how frightened I was while this photograph was being taken, as a tactic to get them to reevaluate their lives and the meaning of being “macho”. * I lied about being frightened while in combat to make a point to the over-Ramboed-up youth and make them reevaluate their lives; One can’t actually afford to be frightened while operating in a combat zone or one will find themselves dead. The only wise time to be frightened is during the planning stage and after you get back to your hotel room and lock the door. 4. Last month (March 15, 2009) a representative (Mauricio Funes) of the FMLN political party -- formed after the 1992 peace accords were signed, won the country’s presidential election. Since the beginning of 2009 the FMLN political party (formerly derided as los muchachos by their enemies) also now controls a majority of the Mayoral and Legislative offices in El Salvador. 5. El Salvador is still (since 2001) using the US dollar as its legal currency.
*Streetphoto
of the Week #145/ What Would George Do?
*Streetphoto
of the Week #146/ In Distress? Bad Winds Blowin': Part One An Exchange of Battered Umbrellas *It was cold and rainy and very windy on Wall Street early on the morning of April 15, 2009. Our taxes were due in to the government by 11:59 p.m., this after the AIG mortgage fiasco and lack of government regulation brought everyone's investments crashing down all around us; bailouts leading to job loss leading to homelessness leading to stimulus leading to taxpayer ownership of corporate assets . . . Wow, that's weird, Janet leaned over and whispered to me as we walked away from the Stock Exchange, Have you ever noticed how as soon as you turn down Wall Street it instantly gets 5-degrees colder ?
*Streetphoto
of the Week #147/ In Distress? Bad Winds Blowin': Part Two Financial District Crash Site; Umbrella Breakdowns on Income Tax Deadline Day
*Streetphoto
of the Week #148/ In Distress? Bad Winds Blowin': Part Three For those of you not yet familiar with Flickr, it’s an online photography-sharing community that brings photography fanatics worldwide together and allows for discussions amongst them about the inner workings of the art’s method, technique and disposition. I realized as it was occurring that the following exchange (no pun intended) with Flickr friends that occurred shortly after I posted the entire pool of photographs I made during the April 15th Tax Deadline Day shoot on that website would serve nicely to explain to regular Streetphoto of the Week guests what Janet and I were up to in Lower Manhattan in the middle of April 2009. GregÔry is a street photographer from Paris, France and Laura=^.^= is a photographer from El Salvador and the moniker SpM before my initials stands for my Flicker nickname StreetphotoMan. GregÔry says: i like this one... the angle, the moment, so great shot Posted 28 hours ago. Thank you GregÔry & Laura=^.^=, All those things - - the angle, the movement (part serendipitous - - part manufactured) and perspective were all subtly and covertly built into the piece as supporting actors, to wonder aloud about the beating the USA is taking on the world stage and the beating USA taxpayers - - on the first April 15th Tax Deadline Day since capitalism was forced to accept socialism as a cure - - the huge flag on the New York (world) Stock Exchange (representing the near certainty of eventual recovery for the markets and capitalism alike) dwarfing the small flag (pictured upside down on the T-shirt & umbrella model in the "distressed" position) representing our more frantic near-term concerns for the here and now - - - the continued movement under the flag and past the Stock Exchange acknowledging the never-ending flow and universal uncertainty of economy, government and life in general. Streetphoto dread, a fleeting creative thought all gussied up in mock over-absorption of propaganda and punditry . . . Thanks again GregÔry & Laura=^.^=. I'm glad you liked my little theatrical streetphoto escapade attempting to express in as dignified manner as possible my (blue-jeaned little guy's) disgust, derision and suspicion for the (supposedly BIG) guys and gals in suits and ties (worldwide) who were supposed to know (was it greed or incompetence or both?) what was going on, but who clearly still don't . . . Cheers,
*Streetphoto
of the Week #149/ April 15, 2009: Wall Street Piper Plays the Day NOTE: The Wall Street Piper, as I refer to him in Streetphoto of the Week #149 (because that's where I found him) is actually Philip Belpasso, known in real life as the Ground Zero Piper. Philip does well (but says business has dropped off sharply of late) handing out zodiac flyers and busking among the tourists and traders and occasional uber wealthy pedestrian sitting on a Wall Street sidewalk and playing his music at the very spot where George Washington took the oath of office to become the first President of the United States of America on April 30, 1789.
*Streetphoto
of the Week #150/ Wall Street Polka Dot Dollar Discount Bubble: Issued on May 26, 2009
*Streetphoto
of the Week #151/ Cleanup Time in Manhattan: The Aftermath of a Market Whirlwind;
*Streetphoto
of the Week #152/ After Crash Traders: On IT & Still Gettin' IT Done
*Streetphoto
of the Week #153/ The Post-crash Tax Day on Wall Street DreamScape Finale
*Also: *http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002C4JR9W * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CMMBJ2
*Streetphoto
of the Week #154/ A Bold Fashion Moment in Middle America #222: Polka Dot Umbrella Sugar Baby Checkin' out the Crazy Slacks on Passing Plaid Daddy
Also:
*Streetphoto
of the Week #155/ Amsterdam Canal Bridge: Amsterdam Umbrella Lover Crossover Blow-by
In many ways I'm living the aftermath of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window. No -- I'm not the wife murderer Thorwald, or the lonely heart across the way, or the maid Stella. I'm the photographer with the faraway look in his eyes held hostage in his chair at home, keen to inherit enough health over time to get back up and get back in the game... In the film Rear Window, Hitchcock built a woman in Grace Kelly's Lisa Carol Fremont so ideally perfect and appealing -- that insomuch as such -- she became unavoidably alluring to every filmgoer and every intrepid photographer alike, on-screen or off. Yet James Stewart as L. B. Jefferies has this thing in his life that just won't allow him to commit to a conflicting reality. Either to the harm of the thing that endearingly possesses him, or to the harm of the alluring woman whom Alfred Hitchcock built to tempt him and who he fears would never except the thing he's possessed by as an essential part of them. Global adventuring and exotic, sometimes cynical photography versus beauty, refinement, security, innocence and hope... Have you ever thought about what might have happened to those characters after the movie ends? What became of their love and how did Jefferies' uncompromising wanderlust thing (an occasional risk factor) make out in the end? Well, as I've said before, In many ways I feel as if I'm living the aftermath of the movie Rear Window. Me in the Jefferies roll, trying my best to love both my obsession and the girl. My equally-alluring partner as Grace Kelly's Lisa, at least tolerating and often intrigued by the thing in question -- -- -- while still cribbing a copy of Vogue on the side... ... ... I'm living the aftermath of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window, and thanking the lord it didn't turn out to be Psycho instead! Refinement and beauty have their places in a good happy-ever-after too... Happy 19th wedding anniversary Grace ... ... ..., uh, uh, Lisa ... ... ..., uh, uh, --- my lovely Janet dear!!
*Streetphoto
of the Week #156/ Montevideo Recycle Wagon Horse
*The 10-year Streetphoto of the Week exhibition marks the end of its third full year with today's issue. Click Here if you missed any of the first 155 issues; you can catch up *Just in case you were curious, *Number of Streetphotos of the Week Issued so far * 157 Thanks for the hundreds of emails !!
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