Virtually Uncommon

Stephen Shore is an inviting target for GSV junkies. Not only are many of his best-known photographs labeled with precise address and date, his photos are so deadpan in their original state that they remind one of Street View. Rephotography is tempting, and all the info is there. It's just a matter of taking the time to investigate. I've made a few precursory stabs here, here, and here, as have Dalton Rooney and Kip Praslowicz.

But these are baby steps compared to Christian Storm's new Tumblr, Virtually Uncommon, the site whose subtitle says it all: Rephotographing Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places using Google Street View. Just a few days old, Storm has 60 posts up already, with GSV Shore scenes followed by links to the original photos. A labor of love worth checking out.

Street Photography Now

Street photography has swelled in popularity in recent years, and with its rise has come a slew of sites promoting the form. A notable example is Cedar Pasori's recently published 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now. This article is well timed, since street photography has slipped into a period of dangerous fragmentation. There are so many possible approaches and techniques that it can be hard for the interested viewer to know where to start. A simple Google Image Search for "Street", for example, reveals a multitude of possibilities within only the first 30 images. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Google Image Search "Street"
Thankfully, The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now delivers just what the title promises. It cuts through the clutter, encapsulating a state of the art summation of street photography today. As a longtime street shooter I find the selections fascinating. What elevates a photographer into the pantheon of The 50 Greatest? Obviously they share a love of streets —Street, to use the photographer's term. But what more can we learn? What are their techniques? Their hopes? Their dreams? Their influences and antecedents?

Pasori has cleverly incorporated Street into the very structure of the list by remaining receptive to luck, chance, and the happy accident in finalizing his selections. To the extent that many of the choices leave the viewer scratching his or her head, that sense of mystery only reinforces the serendipitous nature of Street. Street cannot be bottled up and explained. Street is impetuous. Street is unplanned.

Some of The 50 Greatest show the street in Platonic terms as a visual extension of what a street can be. In the photo below Moby depicts the street from a central vantage point, using the center line to divide the image symmetrically. The palm trees and lack of pedestrians complement the idealized theme. Ask a child to draw his perfect image of what Street looks like and one might get something like this. Assuming the child was standing in the middle of an empty street in Miami. Or perhaps examining the shadow of Street on a cave wall.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Moby
Moby's photo directly references the earlier work of well known street photographer Thomas Struth, whose vision of 6th Avenue in Manhattan pioneered the symmetrical street motif.

6th Ave and 50th, New York, 1978, Thomas Struth
Julian Berman's photo below follows a similar strategy. He too depicts the street from a fantasized perspective. But there are a few key differences. Unlike Struth and Moby, Berman has chosen to shoot from the street's shoulder, throwing the viewer deliciously off balance. Instead of palm trees or skyscrapers, Berman uses the distant sea to play a background role. If "good dreaming is what leads to good photographs,” (according to the Wayne Miller quote) this is a street of dreams. If your dream had a distant parked car in it.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Julian Berman
Berman's image takes its cue from the classic dream-like work of street master Gregory Crewdson, one of the first photographers to fully explore the parked-car-in-street motif.

from Twilight series, 2002, Gregory Crewdson
Failure is a constant in Street which must be overcome. 99% of the streets we walk down will have no parked cars, no men standing in the rain. That Crewdson found such a scene —Perhaps after days or months of pounding the pavement in search of something he could only imagine— is a tribute to the perseverance of him and all street photographers. We might be tempted to chalk up such discoveries to luck, if it weren't for Crewdson's uncanny ability to find such scenes over and over again.

Untitled (Brief Encounter), 2006, Gregory Crewdson
Moby, Berman, and Crewdson pay deliberate homage to street photography's very early history as well. The viewer is reminded of this photograph by street photo pioneer Roger Fenton, which explores the same themes of the void, the open road, and the beckoning passage.

Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855, Roger Fenton
In contrast to these serene vistas, Liam McHenry's street scene (below) is decidedly gritty. McHenry lifts the veil of fantasy. Now we are in the real world, a world of trash receptacles delightfully ascending in a row, each with a splash of fuschia. This is the type of thing most people walk by without noticing. Look at the woman now, walking by. Only the heightened visual powers of a dedicated street photographer notices the trash buckets. Only they can bring them to our attention. In this case the result is an image so powerful we can almost smell the cans.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Liam McHenry
Whereas others might take the definition of Street for granted, Johnny De Guzman isn't satisfied. Most street photographers look across. He looks up. His highway interchange photo below questions the very nature of street. What separates a street from other forms like a highway or a road? What separates an avenue from a boulevard? A parkway from a thoroughfare? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? Can the "roads" shown in the photo even be called streets? Guzman's photo represents the height of street and/or road and/or avenue photography. It's about 46 feet tall by my estimate.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Johnny De Guzman
Again this photograph honors its street predecessors, in this case the prolific street shooter Ansel Adams. One of the mantras of street shooting practiced by Adams is that Street can happen anywhere. It can happen in a national park, near a waterfall, near Half Dome. Wherever there are streets it can happen. For Street isn't just a place for cars to drive. Street is a state of mind. And when that state occurs the street photographer is ready to pounce.

Freeway Interchange, Los Angeles, 1967, Ansel Adams
I think the subject below might qualify as more of an avenue than a street. Maybe "promenade"? I guess it's all a matter of semantics. But then again there's no such thing as a "promenade photographer", right? Only Street has the pedigree which can properly encompass such a vantage. The viewer is left to contemplate what those long white lines are. Cracks in an underground volcano? Mayfair streamers? Or maybe just reflective chalk drawings left by an innocent child, wise beyond his years.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Wittner Fabrice
The practitioners shown thus far have followed a traditional route, shooting at a remove in order to more easily codify and objectify the whole. But some street shooters take the opposite approach. In the photo below (from his eponymous Street series "Down These Mean Streets"), Will Steacy zeroes in on the mean street at close range. One can almost smell the nicotine tar on the breath of the street in this photo as the form of discarded butts mimics a hundred exhaust mufflers. But discarded butts only hint at the eternal street mystery. Whatever happened during the first half of those cigarettes is left to imagination.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Will Steacy
Terry Richardson shoots from a similar perspective, reminding the viewer in spectacular fashion of the Erwitt quote, “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice."

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Terry Richardson
Boogie takes the same approach. He knows that nothing is as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Boogie
I suppose the above photos might be more strictly classified as Pavement than Street. Again it's a matter of semantics, yet materially inseparable from the essence of Street. For what is a street without pavement? Might it look something like Yanidel's photograph below?

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Yanidel
In one simple photo he raises a million possibilities. No longer must a street be paved. It can be cobblestone. Dirt. Asphalt. It can be mostly cobblestone with little bits of asphalt smoothing the uneven spots, like butter spread on French baguette. Like that baguette, or any bread really, especially when it's pointed upward like a mighty phallus, it can rise like the Arc de Triomphe.

Or it can wallow in the gutter, as in this photo by Andre Kertesz. Look at the photograph below and be reminded that photographs don't lie. Photographers lie. Some famous photographer said that and it's true, which is sort of a paradox if you think about it, like the paradox of cobblestone juxtaposed with pavement. Or Malroux juxtaposed with Malkmus.

Paris, 1929, Andre Kertesz
Another photographer working at close range is Andre Baumecke. His photo below explores pavement graphically. The thick white lines of the crossing pattern are mimicked by the thick white borders he adds to his images. The border is difficult to see here against the white background, but it is there. It is the void. Speaking of white hats, "hunters aren't cooks," said Henri Cartier-Bresson. Think about that tonight, young street sous shooter, before you dream.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Andre Baumecke
Baumecke isn't the only street photographer to address the issue of walking. Jana & JS have also branched out into sidewalk work, as in the photo below. Many streets are bordered by sidewalks. Sometimes these sidewalks have feet on them. Sometimes, if the photographer is perched at the right place and time, with camera artfully cocked askew, ready to pounce, those sidewalks can create magic.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Jana & JS
Of course sidewalks aren't the only boundary structures found near streets. The simple parking lot is another. In the photo below, Dylan Kasson explores some of the similarities. It's paved. It has lines. Cars drive there. Why can't a lot be considered a form of Street? Kasson's photograph punches right through that question with the drive and spirit of an Indy car doing donuts in a parking lot. What is Street? Consider the definition expanded, because we've just added another lane. Aww Yeah.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Dylan Kasson
Zane&Inzane provide another example. As with Kasson's photograph a lone shopping cart is depicted in the lot. Perhaps it represents consumer culture? Or dare we allow ourselves to imagine something more sinister? A cage? The prison walls we mentally construct while driving down the "street"? The viewer is left to wonder.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Zane & Inzane
Whereas the photographers mentioned thus far prefer the placid vernacular of simple form, Steve McCurry chooses to show the street filled with material. Billboards, cars, pedestrians, snow, The Yankees…Every element has its place in the chiaroscuro. The effect is similar to a manmade Japanese Garden. Remove any one element and the visual dance is thrown off balance. Only a photo like this might compel the viewer to reach out and cry, "Dance with me, Coca-Cola! Dance with me, Street!" And that viewer would of course be richly rewarded.

Times Square in the Snow, Steve McCurry
I haven't yet devoted much discussion to an essential element of Street, and that is its unplanned nature. Whereas many traditional photographers shoot from a tripod with a predetermined idea of what they might find, the street photographer remains open to chance, to the moment, the beautiful accident. Who knows what lies around the next corner? Will it be a street? And if so, what type?

In the photo below, Donavon Smallwood cleverly leverages the chance event of a pedestrian moving through a street scene. Whereas many street photographers might be content to shoot this street as a simple street, Smallwood captures a woman's back right where the street would normally be expected. The viewer is thrown into turmoil. Where is the street? Can this even be called Street? The photograph asks as many questions as it answers.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Donavon Smallwood
Louxi takes this one step further. His photograph below would appear at first glance to depict a simple street. But the chance injection of a bicyclist changes everything. Here he has waited for "The Decisive Moment" to open the shutter, and in so doing open himself to what is possible, to art, to joy, to the simple pleasure of two wheeling.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Luoxi
These two photos directly reference earlier work by such artists as the classic street shooter Josef Koudelka. His timekeeper photograph was initially planned as a simple depiction of the streets below. But the chance injection of an arm into the frame altered the visual dynamic to encompass a very decisive moment. About quarter to noon to be exact.

Czechoslovakia, 1968, Josef Koudelka
Of course Koudelka was not operating naively. He was fully aware of the street pioneers who'd preceded him, in particular the street master Dorothea Lange, whose revolutionary photograph below inspired the Czech revolution. If it is missing a watch, it more than makes up for that deficit in its portrayal of Americana and the Western frontier. "De Tocqueville Who?" she asks. Indeed, Ms. Lange. De Tocqueville who!

The Road West, 1938, Dorothea Lange
Jimmay Bones has taken a very different approach. His photograph below depicts not just Street but streets. The image shows multitudes. Or at least 6 lanes by my count. Sometimes amid the rush to capture a street scene such as this there is not enough time to focus. Someone said the word Bokeh to me once and I've never forgotten it. Because I'm sensitive. Because I hold multitudes. Because I am Street. That's what this photo would say. I mean if photos could talk.

from The 50 Greatest Street Photographers Right Now, Jimmay Bones
Bones' photo draws inspiration from the earliest days of photography, evoking the exploratory methodology of street master Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.

View from the Window at Gras, 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
The scattershot approach, leaving many factors open to chance (in this case subject, aim, focus, and exposure) hints at the exciting world of street photography yet to come. For street photography is currently undergoing a dynamic revolution.

I'm talking of course about Google Street View, the automated photography project which is well on its way to shooting every street in the world. GSV raises many interesting issues for The 50 Greatest. For the current crop of street shooters, probably the primary lesson is that we can all relax and take a breather for a while. GSV has got us covered. Put your feet up. Grab a drink. There's no need to spend hours walking here and there, failing 99% of the time. That's the way we used to do things. Before the future of Street arrived.

Of course this is nothing new for Oregonians. Our state has long been a leader in automated street photography. Even before the advent of GSV our transportation department provided routine online access to current street photos throughout the state. For example, here's a photo of Highway 569 in Eugene taken just moments ago. Thanks ODOT!


Here is my own interpretation of Highway 569, made as part of a Eugene street postcard series.


All of these photos of streets are wonderful. We've never had access to more. But I can't help wondering. After every street has been photographed by Google what will be left to shoot? What will the The 50 Greatest of tomorrow look like? Will the list include a machine on a car roof shooting in all directions? Will it make us ask De Tocqueville who? Or Dance with me, Coca-Cola? Only our children will know.

What's my motivation?

I
This interview with Paul Shambroom was quite interesting. I was disappointed it didn't generate more discussion when it was posted a few weeks back. Shambroom sees a fundamental shift in what it means now to be a photographer. In a nutshell, it's a shift from hunter to editor.

"In the brief history of photography," says Shambroom, "175 years or so, a lot of it has been going out someplace and bringing back your image as a trophy, as a spoil or as a treasure and I think those days are ending pretty quickly."

Memphis, 1968, William Eggleston
One of the original trophy hunters
Shambroom's photos courses at the University of Minnesota follow his philosophy, focusing as much on digital sleuthing as on imagemaking. One exercise requires students to hunt photos online in locations based on the random zipcodes. This is the skillset being taught to the next generation of photographers.

I don't know if image making will totally die off, but I do think the era of the iconic image might be over. This fact was brought home to me several months ago when Bryan Formhals asked in a photo forum, "Name an iconic image from the past few years." I realized I couldn't think of any. Abu Ghraib? OJ Simpson's face? None of them seemed to fit.

It's not like it used to be. When Ruby shot Oswald or when the V-Day soldiers returned, an iconic image was created that we can all think of instantly. But now every event is likely to be recorded by multiple cameras. These images are stirred into the info megastream, and very few are likely to stand out over time.

Time Lightbox, Phil Bicker, 12/28/11
This might be why Shambroom's path looks tempting. Why bother trophy-hunting in the real world when a keyboard and monitor might lead to more interesting material? Of course some digital editors still follow the trophy hunting model. Rafman, Rickard, and Wolf are among the Street View pioneers, but as far as I can see all use a computer in the traditional way, to search for singular moments. Although the curation is sometimes interesting, the motivation doesn't seem much different than less highbrow edits. It all amounts to trophy hunting.

253 Rua Lisboa, Itapecerica da Serra – São Paulo, Brasil, 2010
Street View by Jon Rafman


II
An alternative Street View application is rephotography. Iconic photos may be more difficult to create now, but that doesn't mean the past isn't still littered with them. For photographers it's quite natural to investigate these past photos from a modern perspective. I've written about a few cases, and I keep a file on whichever ones I encounter. Here's a map of the ones I'm aware of. Please let me know of others and I'll add them to the map.


I suspect these are merely the early pioneers in what will gradually become a flood. Perhaps in ten years we'll see Street View rephotographs of Street Views.

Jacques Philippe Street Viewed some of Winogrand's early images here (1) and here (2).

Martin H. Krieger at USC has Street Viewed many of Charles Marville's Paris photographs (3).

Daniel George has Street Viewed Lewis Baltz's Industrial parks near Irvine, CA (4) (my version here).

Ed Hawco has Street Viewed some of Vivian Maier's Quebec photographs here and here (5).

I Street Viewed Robert Frank's Butte photo here (6) and Fred Herzog's Portland photo here (7).

Then there's Stephen Shore. For Street View rephotographers Shore is a goldmine for the simple reason that most of his seventies photographs are clearly labeled with an exact street address. Google searching is a snap. Dalton Rooney was first on board with this post (8). Kip Plaslowicz Street Viewed Stephen Shore in Minnesota here (9) . Justin Hamel Street Viewed many Shore photographs here. And I've tried my own hand here (10) and here (11).


III

B: [To audience]

Normally this would be the part of the play where the dramatic resolution takes place. Boy reunites with girl. Maybe they share a bed. Or it's implied. But it's not like the first two parts developed any dramatic tension. I mean let's face it, this isn't even really a play. Play on words maybe. But I'm not sure the three act structure is appropriate for a blog post. The first two acts sort of relate. The iconic thing has legs. Could be developed. But as written the play thing seems forced. No dramatic arc and the third part doesn't fit at all. What's my character's motivation? Just not feeling it.

[A Tomato is thrown onstage. Then several more.]

You do realize if you throw a tomato at me it's only going to ruin your monitor.

[A piano falls onto the stage from above]

Tough shit. I've made it a play so deal. You try coming up with this stuff day in day out. You try keeping it real. Try keeping it playful. Sometimes you're off. It ain't the first time. So big whoop. Excuuuuuuse me for not being Mr. Perfect. Call me a drama queen, whatever, but don't blame me. I don't even work here. Anyway, send me some Street View rephotography if you know of any.

[Browser curtained]

La Brea and Beverly

The recent Aperture (205) contains an interesting article by Stephen Shore discussing this solstice photo:

Beverly Blvd and La Brea Ave., June 21, 1975, Stephen Shore
Not only is this one of Shore's more famous images, it's probably one of the better known photos of the last half century made by anyone. But at the time Shore made it he wasn't quite satisfied. As related in the article, he felt it might be "imposing a classical pictorial organization" on the scene. Here's how he described his thought process in a 2008 interview with Darius Himes:

So I took this picture, and after I took it … I guess this goes to interpretation and structure and the form of our time. I realized that I was structuring this in a very classical way, with one-point perspective, with things that are setting up the frame and setting up the foreground and I had fun doing it. I was going through a period of seeing how densely I could structure a picture and how far back into the picture I could look and how much I could set up all of this complex picture structure. At the same time I'm thinking, show the very age and body of the time, this form and pressure. Is this it? Or is this a structural understanding that I'm bringing to it that isn't inherent in the scene? I went back to the same intersection the next day and took this picture, which is looking this way towards the other part of this intersection.

Beverly Blvd and La Brea Ave., June 22, 1975, Stephen Shore
DH: It's a completely different picture; hardly even recognizable as the same intersection.

SS: And it feels more like the photographer is hardly doing anything.

DH: The one feels like a very complex structure and this other feels less so. More like a casual snapshot. Do you feel like this shows the form and pressure of the time?

SS: I do. At least that was the direction my thinking went for the next year or so.

The two photos are indeed very different but a little sleuthing relates them spatially:



A few comments. The first photo was shot late afternoon 6/21. The second roughly 21 hours later. This means that either Shore is the fastest color sheet-film developer ever or he went out blind the second day with an inexact idea what he'd shot already. In either case, impressive. Secondly, I can't help wondering how much the first photo is a reaction to this image:

Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas (1963), Ed Ruscha
Shore had to have known Ruscha's painting, in which case it seems too much of a coincidence that he'd include a Standard sign. When he critiques his own photo as being shot in "a very classical way, with one-point perspective," I can't help thinking he's also talking about Ruscha. Just speculation. Of course gas station images have a long tradition in photography, so he may have been commenting on the whole genre.

In any case, great intersection. Landmark photos. And how many locations can claim to have inspired their own photographic project?



That's right. La Brea Matrix has spawned a cottage photo-making industry around Shore's shot. Six German photographers have been commissioned to shoot LA in the spirit of the Chevron sign. It's been going now for a while but I only recently tuned in. One might expect some cross-pollination with this project but as far as I can tell they're two separate endeavors. I guess Germans just dig Shore.

Photos of the La Brea Project by Janko Woltersmann
Meanwhile, the original photo quietly reverberates. As far as I know Dalton Rooney was the first to examine it through Google Streetview.

184 N La Brea Ave, 2009, Streetview image by Dalton Rooney
Today the same Streetview can only be seen from across the divider:

186 N La Brea Ave, 12/1/11, Streetview
Whew. Talk about one-point perspective. Too classical. Maybe I should go back tomorrow and rephotograph.

Here's a cleaner view, a recent boots-on-the-ground reshoot courtesy of Ted Soqui for LA Weekly.


And a night view:

Chevron (La Brea & Beverly), May 5, 2011, Lawrence Solum
That's all fine and dandy but the real action is happening at the Valero Station across Beverly Boulevard from the famous Chevron (straight ahead past the sign in the original photo).

Ikurnasky
It's not so much the station itself which is interesting but the surroundings. They're dense with urban detritus.

Grand Opening (La Brea & Beverly), August 1, 2011
Danny Rodriguez
Here's a more direct shot of the pink wall:

Northwest corner of La Brea and Beverly, 2011
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin
Around the corner the station wall has been tagged by none other than the notorious Banksy:

Banksy Mural, La Brea and Beverly, Scott M. Haskins
Apparently Banksy made the mural while in LA for a wedding and got permission beforehand from the owners. Now it is slated for removal and/or possible relocation. Don't ask me how one removes a spray painted image while keeping it intact. This Streetview image from yesterday shows it covered up while powers-that-be try to decide its fate.


Actually that's only one of two Banksy murals on location. This one is around the corner:

Banksy mural, photo by JMB
Here's a Streetview photo to locate it mentally.


The green wall in back is the one near the Banksy mural. For folks that actually live in LA I think these murals must be fairly well known since there are many photos of them online.

What I'm curious about is did Banksy target that location specifically because of the Shore photo? It seems likely that he would have at least a passing familiarity with Shore's photo. And if so, maybe the paintings are some sort of reaction? Who knows. Only Banksy and he's not telling.

The alternative explanation appeals more. I like to think that Shore and Banksy found this intersection completely independently, and each reacted to it in his own way. That would imply that there's something going at that the site —some spirit of LA embodied in the matrix of wide open spaces, small boutiques and gas stations— that attracts certain artists. In all the hundreds of square miles in the city, two artists zeroed in on the same place. That's how it went down in my mind at least, but then again I've never been to that corner in my life.