Types of Street Photography - Intrusive Street Photography
It is almost hard for me to write about the type of street photography called intrusive street photography.
I have a very hard time relating to the pictures taken by Bruce Gilden, who is the most famous intrusive street photographer.
The one time that I was the subject of intrusive street photography, it made me very uncomfortable.
The last thing in the world I want to do is intrude with my camera, but the bottom line is, the nature of street photography is intrusion. It is easier not to think about that.
Finally, I fancy that I have no intrusive photos to use. But I do. Perhaps they are not text book intrusive photography, but intrusive nevertheless.
I think it is fair to say that at least two people felt some intrusion into their life on Easter Island.
What is intrusive street photography?
Intrusive street photography is literally “in your face” photography. The photographer takes a close up picture of the subject with a flash with the hopes of of capturing a reaction.To understand the technique of classic intrusive street photography, I encourage you to follow this link to the Petapixel blog, Mark Cohen and the Birth of Invasive Street Photography. It largely consists of a video of Mark in action in his home town of Wilkes Barre, a small town in Pennsylvania. You have to see it to believe it!
The photo below is a classic intrusive street photo taken by Irina Escoffery. This is what she says about her method, “I walk in the crowd and look for some interesting faces and characters. As soon as I someone with personality, I go straight to this person and take a photo.”
Photo by Irina Escoffery. Used with permission. You can see her gallery on Flickr.
Like all things, the degree of intrusion is on a continuum. I have never taken a flash street photography picture. I do not even have an onboard flash on my camera. But I do think that I have, from time to time, intruded on people.
Oh, she was annoyed with my intrusion in Dresden.
Intrusive Street Photography and Me.
I mentioned I was the subject, in a manner of speaking, of an intrusive photo. I was in the street between two cars taking pictures of people walking by a painted mural in NYC. Nobody seemed particularly bothered by me taking the pictures, even though I was there for a good bit of time. I have found that this technique of appearing to take a picture of a street scene, like a mural, is a fairly good stealth technique. I finally got the picture I wanted and stepped back onto the sidewalk from the street. A stranger came up to me, told me he saw what I was doing, put his camera literally in my face and took a picture. There was no flash, but he definitely violated my social distance. I just said, “fair enough,” and moved on. It was uncomfortable for me, but it was momentary discomfort. The key might be my thought, “fair enough”. If this photographer had simply approached me with no cause and had taken the picture, my reaction might have been entirely different.
Not all that happy with me in Kyoto.
When I think about taking intrusive street photography, I know it is not really ever going to be in my comfort zone. Heck, making telephone calls is not in my comfort zone. Until recently, I had no intrusive street photographers in my Instagram community. I even put off writing this blog because I was not sure where I would get photographs for it. When I started to do research on intrusive street photography, I realized that I found some of the photos compelling, largely because they are either abstract or humorous. And, even more unlikely, I have begun to imagine myself occasionally taking this kind of photography.
Perhaps she did not find this intrusive, but I am guessing that she did in Riga.
Online I found three photographers who are helping me appreciate and raising my interest in this type of street photography. They are Spyros Papaspyropoulos, Adam Miller and Irina Escoffery. They will be the subject of next week’s blog. And there will be more examples of classic intrusive street photography, I promise.
Exercise
Have you taken street photographs on the intrusive continuum? I did not think that I had, until I really thought about it.