The street has many secrets. A public and, yet, very private space, where people move within an organic, urban rhythm of, apparent, chaos and order. Like dancers, following the absurd, sublime, tragic and, often, comic choreography of their own private music.
It is a theoretical thing street photographer, Michael Ray Nott, likes to talk about.
“One of the things I developed…is what I call civil abstraction,” He explained. “It is just a way of talking about photographing anonymous lives in an urban environment. There was a sociologist named Erving Goffman…he… wrote a book… on how people behave in public and… came up with this term called civil inattention. Basically, in an urban environment…you are aware of people around you but there is neutral interaction. So, you have crowds of strangers in an urban environment in close proximity, they are aware of each other but they don’t impose on each other. It is a method of retaining one’s own personal boundaries… to maintain public order and make privacy possible.”
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
It is a big, thought-provoking, statement from the Nashville-based Michael.
“My takeaway of that,” He continues. “Is (that) photographing in public is a violation of civil inattention. The street photographer is…on another plane. Everybody else walking around on the street, they are all trying to ignore each other. Whereas, the street photographer is stepping into that situation and is very attentive of everybody. What I call…civil abstraction. Because it does abstract the actual reality of what was going on, on the street, in reality.”
People captured candidly, as they try to duck under the radar and keep themselves to themselves. The world rushing in on the street photographer is stopped in a frame of discovery as they, at the same time and necessarily, disrupt the norm.
But Michael, Like Dianne Arbus, also has an eye for the unusual and the offbeat.
“I look back through pictures… several month’s worth of pictures,” He revealed when we spoke about his Time Traveller series. “I will start to see things. It started when I saw two or three photos… people… out of time. When I am out shooting trying to… find people who look like that and kind of photograph them, like they just landed on the planet. When looking through hundreds of pictures you start to see little themes pop out, that was one of them. It is kind of a work in progress, keep finding those people that… look like they are out of time.”
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
‘Time Travellers’ tells the story of the people around us, who most of us don’t even notice, but who are lost in a past era. It is a fascinating study of how fashion trends and movements change and travel on, while some of us have been cast adrift on the great ocean of yesterday.
Originally from Wyoming, Nott came to Nashville via the University of Texas where he was an art student. In the second year he studied photography.
“We weren’t talking anything about cameras it was all theory,” He laughed as he remembered the course. “Then… it sunk in, about the third week, the guy that was teaching the class was fairly famous, and he would just sit and talk photo philosophy. It was Gary Winogrand that was the teacher. I really got into it. I was taking pictures with a twin lens Yashica camera and I wound up taking three semesters of that class.”
After university, Michael found a job as a creative director in advertising, and though he was hiring and directing photographers, he was no longer taking pictures himself.
“A few years back when the iPhone came out,” He remembered his return to photography. “I just found myself taking pictures continually with the iPhone, all kinds of stuff, and then I was sort of shooting on the street. After about a year of that I was ‘I really need to get a camera and get serious’. I guess about four years ago I got a camera and started shooting, about the time I quit my job and just started shooting full time.”
Nashville, AKA Music City, USA, was, for Michael, a great place to practice his trade.
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
“That was taken through glass,” He says of a shot taken of a busy scene with a man holding a beer bottle in his hand. “Let me explain something about the area I am shooting. It is all Honky Tonk bars and restaurants, and all the places that have music playing, they play in the front window of the bar. Most of the action is going on in the front windows, which makes that area an unusual thing to shoot street photography. Because, every time you pass by there, there is action going on in that window. I just shoot the same window over and over, it is always different.”
He talks freely about what he does and is happy to discuss his photographs. I ask about one shot where a lady with a flower in her hair has a shadow running down her spine.
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
“I talk quite a bit about that when I generally do a talk to sort of arts groups.” He told me. “That figures very prominently in my talk and basically my point of showing that photograph is that you are walking around trying to take pictures… and you think well there is nothing to take a photograph of. My point is there is always something to take a photograph of, just keep your eyes peeled. As I was standing there waiting for the light to change to get to the other side of the street to see if there are any photographs over there, but…sometimes that photograph is right in front of you. The shadow went right up into the flower and it made a stem, and there it was. There is always a photograph.”
In another photograph a waitress laying table is suddenly aware of Michael at the other side of the glass. It is one of his bigger sellers.
Copyright ⓒ Michael Ray Nott
“A guy in Italy bought it,” He revealed. “Bought a really big frame of it, print came out beautifully, and I shipped it over there. But yeah that has been a real popular one. I have shot through that window quite a bit, and I really like what can happen. Another thing I do when I shoot on the street is, I will shoot over and over again and every time it is different.”
Michael Ray Nott’s street photography has a sense of fun and yet vibrates with the real and palpable tensions of the street. His is a slightly voyeuristic, but fascinating representation of Nashville.
To date, he is in the process of collaborating with a collective in the city and is working on a book project with the title: Tribulation Nation.
“I’ve shot over the last four years… most every demonstration, Trump rally thing in town,” He informed me. “There is just a lot of stuff out on the street political stuff. Kind of sums up how crazy things are in the United States right now. So, that’s the book I am working on, and I’ve got a little over 200 photos. It probably needs to be edited down a little bit.”
Michael falls silent, a thinking man, erudite.
We mentioned Arbus, but maybe there are also traces of a certain Gary Winogrand in the mix. Nashville, Tennessee, has become the photographic playground, and philosophical melting pot, for Michael Ray Nott. Well, as much as Music City’s social norms allow…
To See More of Michael visit www.michaelraynott.com and follow Michael on Instagram @michaelraynott
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