A recent introduction to street art by a very good friend and the awareness of a new film documentary surrounding Vivian Maier inspired me deeply to explore this area of art further. I had attended several exhibitions in London and found that I was most certainly touched by the exposure of life in certain dwellings in the 1960s to 1970s within England’s main cities at the "Drawn by Light" exhibition , also showing in Bradford. The messages that otherwise society today would not have heard of. I have learnt that unless out future is documented both in words and art, that our future generations will not have the insight or understanding of past. This includes the progress that has been made to arrive to the way society is today. I have recently started to understand that it isn’t enough to take interesting photographs.

Rather, we should strive to take meaningful photographs and share so as other can feel what I feel too.

When I refer to “interesting” photographs - I mean photographs that make us say “wow” from a visual standpoint. Photos that have strong lines, shadows, a good composition and so-forth. However photographs that are “meaningful” make us think more about the situation at hand in the photograph. What is the statement that the photographer is trying to say through his/her photograph? Does it have an opinion? Does the photo have emotion or soul? I feel that a strong image should be both interesting from a visual standpoint and meaningful from a humanistic standpoint.

A street photographer whose work and life I hugely admire is that of Vivian Maier. For those of you who haven’t heard her story, she worked and lived as a nanny her entire adult life– and shot street photography on the side for herself. She created incredible black and white and colour work through the 1950’s all the way through the late 1990′s. She shot an incredible amount of images– that amount to over 100,000 negatives.

The work also of Robert Frank, Henri Carter-Bresson, William Klein have all been traditionally there to portray real life, poverty, deprivation and emotion and the impact it has on today’s society. I have understood that without observations then history will remain history and can be forgotten, lessons will not be learnt. We have film, documentary, snap cameras, phone cameras, but unless the study is focused and succinct then things lack meaning and voice. I have begun with Oxford, being a highly popular busy mixed diversity, cultural city. The year being 2016 and still we see things we ought to not really be seeing. I hope to capture the spirit of a place, the people and atmosphere of a busy affluent town with a cross section of class and socio-economical background.

Much has been written about the ethics of street photography. My view is unless life is not depicted exactly as it is, in a completely natural state, we cannot move on, we cannot feel and we cannot learn.

All images have been taken with a Fufi Xe1 and edited slightly to give traditional film effect with Light-room 6 presets....most definitely an area of photography I will be exploring further over the forth coming months..

Charlotte Anne Photography

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