Watch Something

As part of the tasks we’ve been given by Sylvia, we have to Read something, listen to something and Watch something.. For the Reading, see this post and the listening task see this post. For the Watching assignment I chose the following video.

Paulie B is a New York based photographer who produces a series on YouTube called Walkie Talkie. In Episode 32 of this series he walks around Washington Heights in Manhattan, New York, with Eric “Ribsy” Toribio. He has interviewed many street photographers as they travel around the location where they meet to take photos and chat about their practice, methods, and philosophy.

Ribsy also has his own youtube channel that I’ve been watching for a few years as he uses film photography in his practice of street photography and street portraiture. He shares some insightful information about his practice and the motivation behind the way he works.. When I saw this video

In this episode we see Ribsy walk around the neighbourhood he grew up in with a Medium format film camera asking the locals for permission to make a portrait of them. The people he approaches take kindly to him and ask him a few questions about what he does but he attempts to get this information out there first so he can get on with the task of photographing them.

Whilst walking around the neighbourhood that he’s never revisited for street portraits, he tells Paulie B and the viewers how he feels he’d have missed out part of his life if he hadn’t eventually got around to taking photos here, and mentions that he’s been meaning to come and do this but he keeps procrastinating and finding excuses.

As he walks he surveys the scenes for interesting people doing interesting things and makes a point several times that he’s not one of thes Tik Tok photographers who “just want to take pictures of hot girls” as there is no story or interest in that format. In fact at one point a man asks him if he is himself a Tik Tok photographer to which he sounds a bit put out by.

Ribsy’s motivation is to capture people in their natural habitat doing natural behaviours and it’s only near the end of the video that Paulie B mentions that in the time they’ve been shooting he’d only taken photographs of males. the response details that he just hadn’t seen any women on that walk that he felt he wanted to photograph, and that it wasn’t a conscious decision. This is right before he approaches a women dressed in brightly coloured clothes having a dance to some mobile music machines. Again, she isn’t chosen because she will give him lots of clicks, likes or faves on his media but because he wants to capture the essence of her on film.

He also explains how there are differences between taking photographs in London, England and New York, US. Ribsy lived in London for over three years so did a lot of street photography around the capital and compares the attitudes of the photographers and the subjects in this video. It’s an interesting contrast that he has noticed across this very narrow cultural divide.

One subject mentions that he’s “here today, gone tomorrow” before Ribsy asks him if he’d heard of Jamel Shabazz and they briefly discuss the fact that he is a street photographer who took many pictures on the streets and now many of the subjects of his images are no longer around. Therefore they are immortalised on film and the internet. Shabazz has a book called Back in the Days when he was taking photos of people in and around the hip-hop scene. I haven’t got this book or seen it yet but I have a different book by Ernest “Brother Ernie” Paniccioli (Hip Hop At The End Of The World) which features similar portraits of Hip Hop proponents from the early years. This subject is also fascinating to me and I love the nostalgia and time travelling effect, even though I did not appreciate the music at that time.

With Ribsy and the subject talking about immortalising people, it’s fascinating to think of the truth of the statement. In the days of painting and portrait art not everyone was able to afford the luxury of having a portrait created by an artist. When we moved into photography this elitism still held true for a while until companies like Kodak democratised the process and made it available for almost everyone. Coming forward to today, with smartphones, it’s safe to say that portraits are no longer a thing for privileged people to obtain. Film photography is now something that costs a lot of money to practice, since digital has resulted in a reduction of the amount of film produced, The price of shooting film has become prohibitive to some photographers so it’s interesting to see Ribsy shooting film as he travels around the city. See below for the decline in Film Camera sales to 2005.

Shooting with film confuses people too, most want to see their image as soon as you’ve shot the photo. Ribsy tells the subject early on that he’s shooting on film, using the light meter as a tool as well as a prop to remind the subject that it’s a bit more considered than a quick digital snap.

During my street photography sessions using film cameras I’ve also experienced this and it’s interesting to see the hurt caused by them not being able to see themselves immediately. During the pre-digital age, people accepted that they may never see the image captured on film but today we are keen to see them once the development is completed and often a swap of details takes place so the subject knows where to go and look for their image, either an Instagram handle or a website.

The video makes some allusions to ethics in the practice of photography, and Paulie B has many other discussions with photographers who also have their own methods and beliefs they use when making photographs on the street.

I’d recommend both Ribsy and Paulie B’s channels on YouTube and also their respective Instagram channels too.