Street Dreams : The Street Photography of Melissa Breyer
She stares out at the neon. It says ‘Milk’ and is reflected on the window. The ‘Watchwoman’ is feeling her way across the transparent wall as she polishes the glass. A metaphor for an aspiring actor polishing her ‘act’, or a writer polishing the novel she is working on, just waiting for a publisher to come along? The spray canister, to her left our right as we look at the photograph, a strategically and maybe tragically placed prop in this subtle life moment.
The really nice touch is the world outside. The car and the building reflected in the glass, which gives her a claustrophobic feel. You have an immediate sense that she is trapped. Trapped within her own world, physically and metaphorically. Secured to the rocks of labour by the chains of necessity – yet dreaming of that free bird that resides inside us all…
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“I was passing by the shop early one morning,” Melissa told me of the photograph. “And, thought I saw a glimpse from a bygone era. My imagination plays visual tricks on me all the time. But on second glance, the scene really did look like it was from another time. Her look of reverie was like a straight shot back to my days of freewheeling daydreams.”
Called hope, we resonate with this photograph. It reminds of a time when we ALL had – often outrageous – dreams.
‘No, haven’t quite managed to finish that novel yet… The Man Booker? Nope…haven’t won that either…yet.’
Watchwomen is a clever grouping by Breyer. A series of captivating images that portrays these women in the reality of their everyday.
“I worked in restaurants throughout school,” she explains. “As much as I loved it, I always knew there was another life waiting for me.”
I could feel her wander like an anonymous ghost through her photographs, through another life, locked into her younger, ambitious self. Part artwork, part Melissa Breyer, a fusion of person and project, a potent combination. But aren’t all photographs a union of maker and subject?
“I would often get caught up in daydreams,” she confessed. “While working; thinking of books I was reading or conversations I wanted to have or things I hoped to do. I have such a soft spot for those days, and when I walk by a restaurant and see women working, I just completely identify with them. I wonder, what are they thinking about? What are their stories? My imagination begins creating narratives for them; these women are so much more than their jobs and I see their grace and dignity even in the smallest of gestures.”
Breyer was born in the Bay Area of San Francisco, lived in Los Angeles and New Orleans before shifting ground to New York City.
“I studied fine art (painting and some sculpture) at Hunter College (New York City),” she said matter-of-fact “After I graduated and started selling work, I realized I didn’t like being a professional fine artist – I didn’t like making art for the purpose of selling it – so I went to graduate school for museum studies so I could write about art and design.”
She soon gravitated toward photography and especially street photography.
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“I always loved cameras,” she agreed. “But never considered using one for anything more than taking artsy snapshots of friends and trips. I have a lot of studio artists in my family, but no photographers, so I didn’t appreciate the potential.
“But when I stopped painting, which was a pretty firm stop, I thought : ‘Oh, I will get a camera!’ – so I did and started teaching myself how to use it. I loved the idea that it could be a way to make images that didn’t involve the more labour-intensive effort of oil painting. I took a lot of travel photos and started taking photos of people in the city too. I didn’t know there was a thing called street photography – I was just following my instinct.”
You can, I believe, see that blend of artist and photographer. In the way her work is composed, it often has a distinctive and often subtle, often nostalgic feel.
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“Absolutely,” she responds when I ask if her art work has helped with her street photography. “I was a figurative painter; I painted portraits of enlightenment scientists and fictional saints, so moving over to photos of strangers didn’t seem like that much of a leap.
“I know a lot of former painters who have become street photographers – there is definitely a connection between understanding the relationship between two and three dimensions. In both mediums, it becomes second nature to see a three-dimensional scene and translate it to a two-dimensional image, and to be able frame a composition on the fly.”
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
A figure in a dark fedora hat is hidden behind a wall of smoke. An Orson Wells-like scene which intrigues and tantalises and makes us question what is going on, who is the mysterious guy in the hat?
“I have always loved people watching,” she continues. “I have always loved the beautiful complexities of humanity, and I have always loved walking for hours on end. To be able to experience those things all together, and to be able to make something from it – photos – feels like a gift from the heavens.”
Of course, I like the literary, somewhat filmic, strand to Melissa Breyer’s work, that feeling that you are moving through a series of characters from a novel or a movie.
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“I always think of New York City as a big, wild organism made up of all its inhabitants,” she explained. “I love being able to isolate people and give them their own stories. Of course, we don’t know what their stories actually are; and I never want to impose a specific narrative on anyone, but I love presenting these people like characters from a novel, and about whom observers can create their own stories. So yes, maybe voyeuristic, but also like writing fiction using non-fiction.”
It chimes and being ‘written’ in black and white also gives the framed work a distinctive sometime in the past feel to it.
“Ever since I was in high school I loved the look of black and white,” she said thoughtfully. “I am unabashedly nostalgic; my mind lives in Victorian novels and I am smitten with vintage fashion photography – so it makes sense. Colour is so specific, while black and white is moody, dreamy, and leaves more to the imagination.”
The man, unseen, is jogging toward the booking clerk. He is fleeing the heavies of some top dog criminal as the innocent bystander in a Hitchcock movie (perhaps)? But the ticket clerk is about to make an announcement that the train he needs to buy a ticket for has just been cancelled.
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“That was taken at Grand Central Terminal,” she pointed out. “Which is probably my single most favourite place in New York City. Along with everything else, I love all the old ticket booths, and when I saw her face lined up with the speaker, I thought it looked so striking.
“There’s the cheap-shot visual joke of a circle replacing her eye, but what I always love is the mystery of someone’s face being partially obscured. There is an amazing photo by Joel Meyerowitz of a woman in a cinema ticket booth with the speaker perfectly covering her face. I do not remember having seen that photo before taking mine, but it would make sense that I saw it at some point and it stuck in my subconscious.”
For me, street is one of the most exciting genre’s of photographic art. Sure it borders on and often crosses boundaries with documentary photography and Breyer’s work is a playful mix of these genres. Either way I always felt this was the work of an artist who knows her way around.
Copyright ⓒ Melissa Breyer
“Right before the pandemic I got a Leica Q2 for my birthday,” she told me in an aside. “But that kind of high performance didn’t seem to fit the mood of broken New York City, so I have been going low-tech with a Holga that travelled all over Europe with me in 1994. Accordingly, I really have no idea what most of my pandemic photos look like!
“But honestly? The one piece of gear I’m never without is my iPhone. I use it all the time. Not for my more formal street photography, but for taking visual notes and sketches and like a diary.”
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