Taking It To The Streets

Karen Keating's latest work, STREET PORTRAITS, features images from two Easters -- one in Sicily and the other in Key West. Below Karen shares some thoughts on why street photography is so compelling and what it takes to practice it well.

(c) Karen Keating

Why is the street such an alluring subject? Most photographers begin their photo interest on the street – practicing camera basics, responding to the scene, and making order out of chaos.  The question is what makes some of us stay on the street – gravitating to the unknown? 

My street shooting is focused primarily on street portraits.  My continuing interest and curiosity is people – their ordinary lives and daily rituals.  I am not interested in staging shots, nor do I want to work in a studio environment.  I want to watch, observe, and spontaneously react to the mixture of light, structure and people as they live their lives. I like to watch, observe, and wait.  I do not hide, or use a long lens, often having a short conversation, some times not.  The street offers abundant opportunities and challenges.  I need to be prepared, to be the perpetual student, and trust that there will be images. I am always richer for the experience of working on the street.

Have portraits always been an interest of yours? My graduate school fine art photo thesis was A Colloquy: Mothers and Daughters, which focused on adolescent daughters and their mothers, middle-age daughters with their elderly mothers, and three generations of mothers and daughters.  This extensive portfolio focused on capturing moments of the complex mother-daughter relationship.  Often my focus is on the relationships, but equally I am interested in the person enjoying solitude.

When I am in my city, my environment and I am busy teaching or organizing the program and instructors at Photoworks, my shooting mornings or evenings are in the woods or near the creek in the neighborhood.  I seem to need time away from people, finding the light and reacting to the mood of the moment.  However, when traveling I almost never take landscape images, but concentrate on watching people and waiting for moments that reveal a sliver of their life or interests or daily ritual.

The images in your current show at Multiple Exposures Gallery come from Sicily and Key West, two very different locations and cultures.  How do the locations you chose to shoot in influence the images you capture? The Sicilians, in preparation for Easter, presented my first look at a religious event and the elaborate preparations and seriousness

(c) Karen Keating

of the weeklong affair.  Photographers from many European countries and the U.S. flock to several small towns in Sicily to capture the complexity and importance of Easter Week.  It is truly photographing a five-day event with Good Friday being a 24-hour non-stop parade of altars throughout Marsala.  The enactment and emotions are intense.  I am not sure that I knew what to expect and I found the ten days a profound challenge.

A year later, I was in Key West for Easter.  I have photographed in Key West many times and have found Bahama Village to be my preferred neighborhood.  Bahama Village is off

the beaten path of the well-known tourism in Key West.  I always prefer to select a section of a city, a neighborhood to concentrate on observing daily life whether it is Havana, London, and Kampala.

In preparing for this exhibit the contrast in the two Easters seemed distinct – certainly in my emotional reaction to the two Easters.  I do not think that it was the locations alone, but rather the differences in emotions between the solemnity of Marsala and the joy of Bahama Village after Easter services.  With any street shooting, there is a combination of the observed emotions and the photographers.  I am sure that this is true in most genres of photography.

Tell us what you think it takes to be a successful street photographer? I am not certain that being a successful street photographer is any different from being a good studio, landscape or still life photographer.  Often I define myself as a documentary photographer gravitating to street portraits.  I know that I want to be on the street, observing, watching daily life. Most often I stay still or wander slowly believing that an image will emerge.  At all costs, I try to avoid “chasing” images.  Sometimes I engage people in conversation, sometimes not.  But always the people are aware that I am taking photos.

I believe that there needs to be an artistic challenge when shooting – uncertainty, tension, an edge, even butterflies. The anticipation to capture a moment or ever-illusive images is always present.  Often when I am on the street, I doubt that there will be any images during that shoot.

The chaos of form on the street is always a factor and then there is the experience of “just missing” a moment of significance.  In the end, the street photographer must be prepared and react to the moving images and events.  Planning or organizing on the street seems to be a sure method for being on the outside of events.  The planning aspect is before I take the camera out of the bag and before I load the film.  Once on the street, I am eager to find the visual adrenaline while watching the stream of life.  It is a combination of these feelings, which keeps image making enduring, challenging, and rewarding to me.

STREET PORTRAITS can be seen at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center through October 13, 2013.