Miami Street Photography Festival - Part 1
There is so much opportunity for a street photographer in Miami.
My week spent in Miami at the beginning of December was a week of firsts. I took my first street photography workshop, with Vineet Vohra, and I attended my first street photography festival. I have already blogged about my workshop experience. This blog is about my impressions of the festival.
This is the eighth year of the event. It is held at the HistoryMiami Museum. The price of admission was $20.00 to attend all events at the festival, but get this, if you registered early, it was free. What was not free was the cost of lodging. The MSPF is part of a larger weeklong celebration Art Basel Week. The market price for lodging reflected the demand. Still and all, it was an incredible opportunity to see beautiful street and documentary exhibitions, to hear photographer artists talk about their work, to participate in some whimsical activities, to meet photographers you never in the world thought you would get to meet and to eat and drink at the closing reception.
What I did.
There were 10 Artist and Master Artist talks. I went to five of them.
If I did nothing else at this festival, I was determined to hear the presentation of Gulnara Samoilova. She is the founder, I guess founder is the right word, of #womenstreetphotographers on Instagram. She also curates gallery exhibitions around the world of images taken by women street photographers. Gulnara gives new meaning to the word “curation”. She chooses the images, and then frames and hangs them herself. She finished the street photography festival on Saturday and opened an exhibition in NYC, Women Street Photographers, four days later on December 12. During the question and answer portion of her talk we asked her, “How do you do it all?” Passion. Gulnara has a driving passion to push women forward as street photographers. I can understand that.
I was shamelessly snapping photos of these master photographers. In this picture, Gulnara is talking with Jide Assumpção-Alakija, who was one of the participants in the workshop I took.
I was also quite determined to see Matt Weber’s presentation. Forty years of taking photos in NYC drew me like a magnet. Matt started out as a NY cab driver. You can imagine the interesting things that he saw driving in the city. He made the decision to get a camera and he is still taking street pictures, although he is not driving the cab. Matt captured my heart with his empathy. I recommend that you read the blog, Matt Weber, Former Taxi Driver and New York Street Photographer, written by James Maher on Matt.
Jorge Andres Castillo, a Venezuelan photographer, talked about his project on East Berlin that he completed as a young man in 1989. His story was really a “nail biter”. That he even got in to East Berlin was amazing. In 1972 I had the right to go in on an American military ID. Why did I not have the courage to do that?
I went to both of the talks given by Magnum photographers, Eugene Richards and Nikos Economopoulos, because there was no way I was going to miss that opportunity. Nikos was particularly approachable. He has a large, welcoming personality. I will write a bit more about him later in next week’s blog.
This snapshot catches Nikos Economopoulos, on the right, being the approachable master photographer that he is.
Of course, I went to the Student Slideshow. It was interesting to see the most excellent pictures taken by the photographers who attended the workshop given by Nikos. It was thrilling to see the pictures taken by our group.
Photo by Carlos Antonorsi. Used with permission.
Carlos took the workshop taught by Nikos. This was my most-favorite image out of his presentation of remarkable photos. Sometimes you look at a shot and wish it was yours. I do every time I look at this one. Carlos and I met briefly, but I did not have the presence of mind to realize that I followed him on Instagram. I will not make that mistake next year, when I most certainly plan to attend the MSPF. You can see Carlos’ Instagram gallery at @c.antonornsi.
Photo by Carey Winfrey. Used with permission.
Carey was in Vineet’s workshop. This is one of my favorite pictures in the final slideshow for our group. You can see Carey’s gallery on 500px.
The second part of this blog on the Miami Street Photography Festival, which will post next week, covers what I activities I did not do and what moments were the most memorable for me.
Exercise
Can you find a street photography event, perhaps a festival or gallery showing, that will take place near you in 2020? Put it on your to-do calendar!