The shot is taken looking up at a man with long hair, wearing sunglasses, holding a cigarette, and staring into the distance. The angle is unusual but it adds to the aura, the feeling that there is something of profound importance about this man.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Street Photographer Hugh Rawson tells me enthusiastically. “He had no idea about that. You can see me in his sunglasses reflected. I shot from the hip which I often do, partly because it is discrete, but also because you can’t wander round with a camera to your face, and often by the time you’ve got it to your face the shot has gone. You can see by the angle I am shooting from a low level and into the sun. It was just one of those magic moments that lasted all evening, the light was perfect. Actually that’s one of my favourite images… partly because he looked so much like Jesus, or the idea of Jesus. The fact that he’s got a cigarette just sets it off, the clouds descending and the rays of light. If you took the cigarette and the sunglasses off and gave him a robe, that could be a stain glass window.”
Copyright © Hugh Rawson
I reflect on his thoughts, he is right, the photograph has got a wonderful, mystical, quasi-religious resonance. For me, leaving the sunglasses and the cigarette in place it is : The Jesus of Suburbia’? – apologies to Green Day – and it might still make stain glass. Rawson called it ‘Coming Second’.
Born in Newcastle, the street photographer moved with his family to the Midlands where he grew up. He went to the University of London and now lives in Surrey.
“I was given a little Kodak instamatic,” He told me after enduring a false start with a Polaroid. “Which was great and I can remember taking pictures with that but things went pretty quiet really. I dabbled a little bit with a film SLR when I was at university but… I never really had the patience to do the whole darkroom thing. Jump forward quite a few years and I suppose it was my taking pictures on my phone. I always had the phone with me going back six or seven years. I was taking lots and lots of pictures of things that were around me, not necessarily street just anything.”
Copyright © Hugh Rawson
He falls silent, reflecting on these early days, and I think about one of his shots where a man – presumably the owner/manager of a restaurant is pointing threateningly at a waitress. The waitress, in turn, has noticed Rawson, her eyes and face pleading with the lens to get her out of there.
The photograph carries the ‘Hugh Rawson brand’, his ability to capture a moment at precisely the right ‘click’ which makes it comic, or tragic, or tragi-comic. Of course, that takes more than simple luck.
“I am not very good at staying in one position,” He confesses. “I think this is why street photography works for me. The idea of a landscape photographer who waits two hours for the sun to come up, that perfect moment for the shot and perhaps takes three pictures in a day, I would be bored to tears. I just don’t have the patience to do that. Street is much more to my temperament because I suppose I do get bored easily. I like moving around I am fairly high energy and not knowing what’s going to come next, literally what’s round the corner it is really exciting to me. I suppose it’s something like being on safari in a way. And, the word shooting you know like the whole idea is not lost on me that you are taking a shot and you get that moment.”
Perhaps it is that ability to see something before it is actually in front of you, to anticipate what is about to unfold before it actually does. In much the same way as the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson could hear all the different instruments and the music separately in his head before bringing it together for the band to perform, perhaps Hugh Rawson has a similar penchant for being there at the very moment, or, at least, getting himself into positions for when things happen?
“I am constantly moving and just looking for opportunities,” He explains. “I am pretty good at anticipating what’s coming up. If I watch a person or a couple of people on the street I am quite good at anticipating what they are going to do. They are going to turn face each other, or say something, embrace or exhale their cigarette or any of those things I will wait for that moment.”
From football fans to coffee shop readers, Rawson has a rare talent for the visually fascinating, he moves, he waits, he shoots. His is a thoughtful embrace of life as it surrounds him on the busy streets of our cities. Sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always, always holding our interest.
Copyright © Hugh Rawson
A young couple hold onto each other, stare longingly at one another on an underground platform, as people, blurred by motion, rush past. Their whole universe is condensed and focused on each other as they part. Around them, others, the stressed, the lonely and the late seek out a train that will carry them back to their anonymous lives in the suburbs. It is a sweet and tender moment by a street photographer equally at home telling the visual comic or tragic stories of the humans of the everywhere.
“So, ‘Parting’ was shot at Waterloo station as I waited for the last train out of the city,” He explained. “That sounds more epic than it was – not like I was escaping a war zone – just an evening in town. I always look for private moments that take place in public, and I suppose a kiss is an intimate version of that. Robert Doisneau’s famous shot of the couple outside the Hotel de Ville has always been a street image that I’ve loved. It really seems to encapsulate its time as well as saying something about the human condition – even though we now know the couple were paid to pose. My couple weren’t, and it’s a completely candid shot.”
An observer, a mover, a shaker, a man whose street photography never disappoints Hugh Rawson’s adventures start here.
Copyright © Hugh Rawson
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