Nearly 40 people packed the Washington Street Gallery for the ‘Street Photography’ PRC Night with guest host Hank Hauptmann on 6/12/18.
(Thanks to the Washington Arts Center for hosting us. Read about the PRC Nights program here.)
Hank fielded questions and offered observations on his work, methodology, and aesthetic. Shooting fast and exclusively at 28mm over a long period of time makes him able to rapidly recognize and capture an image.
“I see the frame [looking on the street] and can visualize the shot before I take it,” he said. “Composition is the most important element to me. And I’m still a purist in that I don’t crop my images.” Everything in the shot is in the print.
“Street” is extremely popular among shooters these days, what with better quality cellphone cameras, small point-and-shoots, and improved lower-end equipment. But equipment doesn’t equal talent.
“It’s like writing,” Hank noted. “Everyone can write a shopping list, but not everybody can write a poem.”
PRC members Steve Genatossio, Duygu Aytac Mullin, Peter C.L. Nohrnberg, and Magnus Snorrason also showed and discussed their work.
“In New York, I was standing right out there and people were oblivious to me. They look right at you and walk on by. There’s no suspicion [of the photographer].” Bostonians, on the other hand, are more on guard around a photographer.—Steve Genatossio on the difference between shooting in Boston and in New York City.
“When you’re a woman, you’re very aware of being looked at, especially in Instanbul [where she’s from]. With the camera, I wanted to be the one doing the looking…”—Duygu Aytac Mullin, on concentrating her shooting on men-dominated spaces.
“What is the street, if not a zone of maximal contact [among people]? That’s what draws me to it, the maximal contact…I’m a voyeur by nature, and I guess that’s why I like street photography.” —Peter C.L. Nohrnberg
“Sometimes I chase sunbeams between mirrored buildings and let the light find the subject for me.”—Magnus Snorrason