Walker Evans

The Streets Are Paved With Photos

| paulamyes
Something strange afoot … Raúl Cañibano’s Habana, 2023.

 

I came across a wonderful little piece in the Guardian the other about a photographer whom I’d never heard of before, but on looking at his work I was completely enthralled. The photographer is Raúl Cañibano from Cuba. His work falls into the categories of humanism and surrealism and follows in the traditions of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliot Erwitt, Walker Evans, Josef Koudelka and Sebastião Salgado. It is wonderful stuff and I would urge you to have a look at his work and maybe buy his books.

This genre of photography is one that for a number years I really wanted to practice without much success. There is this assumption that it is very easy – all you have to do is walk around and point your camera at everything you see and you’ll end up with “art”. It takes a great deal of dedication, patience and an eye that can spot “a significant moment in the continuous flux of life and captures it in a fraction of a second”. (p 104 Badger, G. 2007 “The Genius of Photography – how photography has changed our lives” Quadrille Publishing Ltd, London). Or to put it another way that nanosecond when all the individual elements of a photograph come together to create meaning. For years I have wanted to take a certain photograph that for me epitomises this ethos. I can see the image in my minds eye, but, I can never manage to make it happen. It is a simple concept but it has eluded me.

 

Durbar Square by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Walking through the feeding pidgeons in Durbar Square Kathmandu. Olympus OM4 with Sigma 75-210 lens, Kodak Ektachrome 100.

 

The idea is that a person walks into a large flock of pigeons that are feeding on the ground and as they do the birds take flight and we have a photo of a person surrounded by a swirling mass of birds.  As I said it is a very simple concept and not original in any shape or form. The occurrence happens frequently yet I just can’t nail it. The best attempt so far is one that I took in Nepal in 1987 (yes it’s been going on that long!). It’s an OK shot on one level, but it is really too cluttered to work. Fast forward to Monday and I was in Perth walking through Forest Place where there was a flock of pigeons feeding on the ground. Suddenly alert to the possibilities I caught out of the corner of my eye a small boy running around in that state of hyper excitement that only small boys can have. I immediately thought that at last it is finally going to happen. So as the little lad approached the birds I quickly framed up and set an appropriate aperture and shutter speed and waited for the decisive moment of the child scattering the flock and them taking flight around him. I could just see the finished photograph. So what happened? Well the little lad did indeed run among the pigeons and they just didn’t react. The whole episode was a tremendous anticlimax. Maybe one day it will happen.

 

The Kid Among The Pigeons
The Kid Among The Pigeons. Forest Place, Perth, Western Australia. Canon 5d with Canon EF 50mm f1.8 ii.

The Near East

| paulamyes

At a bit of a loose end we decided to go out on the Goldfields Road to Tammin. The town’s sole raison d’être is the transportation of the surrounding areas grain crops. The grain bins and railway siding around which the town is built are the key features of the town. With the increasing industrialisation of modern agriculture farms have got bigger and bigger and employ less and less people so like many rural areas although generating a lot of wealth the town is in decline.

 

Derelict by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Abandoned farmhouse on the Goldfields Road in Western Australia. Olympus Pen EP-5 with Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 lens. Exposure: 1/640 sec, f5.6 at ISO 200. Converted to monochrome in AlienSkin Exposure 4.

When I first got interested in photography I was living in the South East of England which is a very verdant and prosperous region. Naturally the first photographers who caught my eye were British ones like David Bailey, Snowdon, Patrick Litchfield and Terrance Donovan.As I went on I discovered more socially aware photographers such as Chris Killip, Graham Smith and Don McCullin. I  remember going to see Killip and Smith’s exhibition “Another Country” in 1985 and being absolutely blown away by the subject matter and the quality of the work – it was one of transcendent experiences and it altered my perception of what photography could be dramatically. It was quite a while before I turned my attention to non British photographers. When I first saw the work of Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore, and Robert Adams I couldn’t really relate to the subject matter. Their vision and representation of the USA was one that was completely foreign to me and outside that which the mainstream media presented. It wasn’t until I migrated to Australia and started to explore the rural areas seldom visited by tourists that the penny finally dropped. I started to see similar scenes and over time I have attempted to capture them. I’m never quite sure whether it should be in black and white or colour so I find myself fluctuating between the two mediums and never quite happy with the results.

 

Tamin by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Tammin grain bins and railway station. Olympus Pen EP-5 with Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 lens. Exposure: 1/800 sec, f5.6 at ISO 200. Converted to monochrome in AlienSkin Exposure 4.

Which brings us to the photos in this post. They are just a small sample of the photos that I took on our road trip to Tammin. At first I processed them as colour and felt that the colour detracted from the starkness that I saw and felt. I then tried monochrome. When I worked in the darkroom I liked to use Ilford Multigrade  FB warm tone glossy paper and that is a look I try to replicate with my digital images albeit without much success. When Ilford’s digital media arm Harman Technology introduced their warm tone gloss baryta inkjet paper I thought that my prayers had been answered and I used it for a couple of exhibitions I did. It was a sad day when it was discontinued – I still have 5 sheets of A3+, not enough to do any proper work. So now I try to replicate the look in AlienSkin Exposure 4 which is what I have done with these photos. The problem is that while it looks OK on screen when you translate it to printed media it does work as it is not subtle enough. Perhaps the photos should have stayed in colour after all.

 

Closed by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Empty shop front in Tammin, Western Australia. Olympus Pen EP-5 with Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 lens. Exposure: 1/100 sec, f5.6 at ISO 200. Converted to monochrome in AlienSkin Exposure 4.