Stephen Leslie’s Adventures In Street Photography
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
In one photograph, a young lady with a lizard’s tale tends to a baby in a push chair? Meanwhile, a smiling girl apparently has her head in a bubble?
Street photography, of course, is all about interpretation. The visual lends itself to analysis – the who, what, where, when and why as the essence of any representation. But, how do we know what we are looking at is, actually, an accurate reflection of what is happening? In turn, the photographer, the subject and the viewer may all have their own, often mutually exclusive, analytic impression of what happened or was happening in any image.
“There is a weird tendency within street photography to kind of always take it completely out of context,” Street photographer Stephen Leslie explains. “Obviously it is candid and not set up, but most street photography, I find, is presented without any kind of context, and just sort of plonked there in front of you. Obviously people have styles, and they have ways that they photograph, but there is usually very little explanation given to any street photography. I totally understand – that’s where a lot of it gets its power. But, at the same time, all street photography is also a record of what a photographer has seen, where the photographer has been. All of my photographs are part of this ongoing memory/diary/documenting of what I see in my life. Everyone sees extraordinary, weird, interesting, beautiful, even mundane things, but mundane can be beautiful as well. So, it is just for me… a record of what I see. Now I do the thing where I fill in the context, either truthfully or with huge amounts of lies.”
I like to call these ‘lies’, witness syndrome. That moment when you put your own story on to a photograph you have just taken.
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
A smartly dressed man pulling a shopping trolley behind him, is associated, by Stephen, with lonely hearts ads. The man looks awkward and surprised by this intrusion into his life. Who is he, what is he, where is he, doesn’t matter, his existence in a photograph has been narrated and he becomes part of a fascinating book.
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
In ‘Sparks : Adventures In Street Photography’, Stephen Leslie has cleverly annotated his photographs with little stories of what MIGHT be happening in the lives of the people and situations he has photographed. The result is an absorbing, often funny, often strange, though thoughtful trip through the existential road and internal thoughts of this street photographer.
“I got to the point where I had been doing this for nearly 20 years, and I wanted to make a book,” Stephen explained. “But because of the fact that…most (of my) street photography is just really a collection of stuff I had seen, I found that, thematically, I couldn’t work out how to structure a book. I was lost in the dark a bit, and was groping about. Obviously I wanted to have some of my best photographs, but I wanted there to be some kind of overarching theme to the whole book. When I stopped making documentary films I became a screenwriter. So, I spent the last 15 years writing for films…so I am very interested in plot and narrative. I realised, looking at a lot of my photographs, the ones that I felt worked best were the ones that suggested a wider narrative. The ones that you looked at and tried to think what was going on here. Or they would have a character in them… and make you think about what’s going on with this person.”
The book, in many ways, is a mirror on Stephen Leslie’s life. A great thumping drumbeat of great images overlaid with a melodic, looped piano riff that oozes written commentary and, to some extent, plot. A book where the photographer collides with the storyteller in a humorous and thought-provoking mix of the beautiful, the absurd and the E Street shuffle of existence (with apologies to Bruce Springsteen).
“It’s been weird,” Stephen confessed. “It was a real gamble…because I haven’t done anything like that before, and I haven’t really seen anything done like that before, and I had no idea how people would respond to it. But, so far they seem to be liking it, but it’s early days yet. It has literally only been out for a couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see what happens.”
There is, for me, some delicious irony to this project. To begin with street photography, of all the photographic genres, is supposedly one of the most honest. It is, as Stephen has mentioned, candid and never, ever set up. A fleeting slice of ‘reality’ captured in one frame. The street photographer’s effort is focused on holding a mirror to society. The difficulty comes with the interpretation of what is witnessed in that reflection.
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
A man, wearing nothing but shorts is stretched out on some sort of deckchair on the main street in front of what seems like a building site.
“The bloke … sunbathing in Shoreditch,” Stephen ponders. “I mean there is no story attached to that at all. I was walking down the road with a friend of mine, I saw this bloke sunbathing in the middle of the street on a blisteringly hot day, not a care in the world, I took two photographs of him. I discovered that he is notorious, and he does it all the time, but I had never seen him do that before.”
Like all street photographers it proves difficult to quantify what Stephen is actually looking for when he is on the street.
“I always have my camera with me,” He reveals. “Whenever I am out I am looking for stuff to photograph but it will be anything that catches my eye. I think one of the hardest things to photograph is dynamics between people, and moments of real interaction and potential drama and things like that. So, I am always looking for stuff like that but that, as I have discovered, is very, very difficult. I am looking for characters, I am just looking for something that is out of the ordinary but at the same time stuff that is incredibly ordinary can also be interesting.”
Stephen is still a proponent of film and has not yet been tempted to convert to digital, using Medium format, either a Yashica Mat 124G or Mamiya 7ii, and for 35mm, he mainly uses a Contax T3.
“I like the certainty when I use film,” He told me. “I sort of hopefully know what I am going to get, but the other thing that I really love about film, I love not knowing what I have got until a little bit later. I like the delayed gratification or the delayed frustration sometimes that comes with film. You know with digital you can take and instantly you can see, whether it has worked or not, and then you can adjust and you can try something else. With film I don’t take many photos in comparison with a lot of other photographers. I know people who go out and they shoot three four hundred a day and I don’t do anything like that, I can make a roll of film last for a month.”
Documentary film maker, screenwriter and street photographer Stephen Leslie is someone gently pushing at the boundaries of street photography. But, more than that, he is also supplying his own very unique commentary on what he shoots. I find this exciting.
Looking over a girl’s shoulder we discover a head in a bag…
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
Copyright ⓒ Stephen Leslie
To See More of Stephen Leslie
Buy SPARKS from AMAZON
Leave a comment