CONTACT STREET

By MICHAEL PERKINS

FOR STREET PHOTOGRAPHERS, ONE VERY SAD BY-PRODUCT  OF THE PAST TWENTY YEARS has been the incursion of the cell phone and its impact on the shooter’s art of chronicling life in the raw. Sifting out the potential keepers in a day’s work shooting among the public now consists largely of image after image of people turning inward, holding conversations with no visible partners, their faces frozen in the permanently bent, blank dataflow which now passes for life. It’s boring to look at, disheartening to witness, and death for pictures. The beauty of solo thought or quiet contemplation that used to be the harvesting field for street work is winking out of existence, one redundant text at a time. To photograph a person on a phone is to repeat the same dreary image of isolation over and over ad nauseam.

That’s why, in recent street shoots, I now search out groups of two or more people, just to show persons  in actual, active contact with other persons. The back-and-forth of shared experience animates the face, and the street is once again filled with humans rather than mere ambulatory receiving stations. And when I go looking for visually clear evidence of this sort, I eavesdrop on the friendship of women.

This is all my own subjective view, of course: however, to my mind, women speak to each other in emotionally layered engagement, a physical reinforcement of their connection that is starkly different from the talking that occurs between men, who, even when they are standing alongside each other, look like they’re either waiting for a bus or queueing up for a physical. There are exceptions, of course, but when I’m looking for street subjects that look like they are actually involved with each other, I look for two or more women chatting.

Generally speaking, and in ways which greatly inform candid photography, men share information, data, or analysis, while women share all that plus feelings. They move beyond mere transactional talk into vivid communication. Images reveal the underlying connections between people, all the more eloquent because they are not always intending to show them, or are unaware of the clues that they unwittingly share out despite their best efforts. The world doesn’t need even one more lonely picture of a person on a phone, but true pictures of people experiencing a genuine connection will always surprise and fascinate. And for me, there is a qualitative deepening of that connection when it’s shown on women’s faces. If you want to know the ball score, ask the guys. If you want to know the real score, ask the girls.