Stories suspected if not told
Nature child dipping her toes into urban photography
I used to wonder why so many photographers like to shoot city life.
City life stifles me. My senses judge it a harsh, unpleasant environment. Too much noise, too many smells. Too much ugliness, especially. Wires and litter and dirt and tired, fading facades.
When I am surrounded by roads and buildings, my eyes will wander automatically in search of the nearest whisp of green. I can only be truly at peace when I am surrounded by enough living, organic beings.
But in most cities and densely populated areas, plastered with concrete and structured along straight lines and rigid measurements, organic relief is scarce, and I feel I am slowly drained of both breath and happiness.
One learns to feed onself on morsels in the city: a few flowers on a balcony, a line of trees regimented down a street, sometimes as little as a grass-invaded border. The city will rarely improve my mood.
But today was different.
I brought my camera along to work, with a very specific purpose. The day before I had witnessed a scene on my way to the train station that I wanted to try and capture. An urban scene — unusual for me to begin with.
In the unused space between the Fine Arts concert hall and a major construction site, a recreational area had popped up, complete with bar, beach chairs, skating ramp and a a painted container serving as the only outdoor swimming pool in the whole of Brussels. The concept was funny enough, but recently artists had also started decorating the surrounding wooden panels, and the street. It was bizarre and beautiful.
I set out from the office after work with the camera bag stuffed in my backpack and the camera around my neck, mainly because I didn’t feel like shouldering two rather incompatible bags. But with a camera on hand ready to use, I automatically slip into photographer mode. And I look at a place differently.
All of a sudden the ugliness of the city seemed to recede. Colours, contrasts and compositions emerged, and abundance of shapes, reflections, estranging abstractions.
People also changed. Usually I try to ignore the throngs of strangers I cross on the street. Trying to zoom into each and every one of them leaves me giddy and depressed with an overload of emotional static. But now, focusing on a particular setting, people turned into interesting characters populating a scene, making the viewer feel there is a story there, suspected if not quite told.
I think it’s somehow easier to take an interesting picture in the city — although by no means I mean to imply that making good photographs is easy. But there are simply so many elements contrasting against each other that, if you know how to look, some pictures almost seem to make themselves. Buildings and streets draw composition lines almost naturally — sorry for the pun. And the ugliness, roughness or impersonal feel of the place provides a decor in which all of sudden things start to happen.
I’m starting to think I might not make a bad urban photographer after all.
And I guess I’ll take my camera with me to work more often…
