John,
I know you were joking: I never had that sort of impact on anyone with a snap!
But on a broader sense of the photographic images one makes: yes, there are bound to be personal sensations that drive one to recognize particular motifs as being relevant to one's own being, and that's probably why I keep well away from landscape. It is historical: I used to specialize in model pictures, and when that ended I found myself faced with the stark choice of either spending my own money on the delightful creatures or doing something else, something available and free rather than imported and prohibitively expensive. Available meant landscape, and I simply felt nothing for it beyond its use as frame for a person. Of course I could see a beauty in sunsets, multi-coloured beaches and shallow seas, but the prettier they were the more they required the human touch (for me) to make photographic sense.
So, that made me think of alternatives: find a new genre or just sell everything off and take up social drinking (and its consequences) when drink isn't permitted due to heart problems. Fortunately for me, the Internet reopend my memory to stuff that was seminal when I first became attracted to the medium, and in many ways it saved me from floundering about like a dying fish in the bottom of a boat. Which was where 'street' came in, but not necessarily in the sense of confrontational stuff, but more of what being in public can reveal in a visual sense. Hence, reflections within windows, views on advertising media, and so forth. I'd say that at the taking stage, these all conform to a broad concept of what I may think street is, but at the processing stage, I know very well that I try to eliminated as much as I can and concentrate on whatever I feel might really be the point of that image. At that time, the moment of where to fly, I have to admit to a somewhat jaundiced view on society and the human condition as I experience it. So if bleak is the speak, then that's perhaps fairly accurate a reflection of where I feel that I am. Conversely, there are times when I go out with a caption in my head, trying to find something to suit it. But usually not: usually it's about the thing hitting me right on the nose.
Frankly, I don't care very much for situations where the plot is laid out plainly for all to see; I suppose it's why I would much prefer doing fashion photography again rather than calendars, given both chance and choice, and unlike in my professional life, where I honestly didn't feel myself much influenced by other snappers if only because there was never time to think about dong anything "à la" but just to get on with it in one's own way as rapidly as possible, in post-pro life I find the opposite true, and the more I trawl and absorb those Americans and Europeans of the 40s and 50s, the more drawn I am to try to enter into a contemporary version of their world. Of course, that's impossible too, if only because nobody wears real hats anymore, and yellow cabs are not plentiful on the streets of Mallorca. I think the last time I saw a striped barber's pole was in 50s Glasgow.
So maybe even what I do get around to doing is actually born of a sense of frustration and that will out in the pictures too, I guess. What's funny, to me, is seeing other contemporary people trying to ape Leiter, Levitt, Klein, Callahan, Levinstein et al. and do so with razor-crisp images and terribly vibrant colours, killing the real sense of what was with their oh so very modern tools.
If one has to be nostalgic, be nostalgic for the real thing, try to be honest to it.
Rob
