Her work is like layer cake. Generous helpings of bleak reality, iced with tenderness, laced with fleeting moments of beauty. Suzanne Stein makes powerful street photographs. Photographs that give a glimpse into another world where existence is played out at the very edges of the human universe. Moments of the most extraordinary madness and street chaos, where, once in a while, something unexpected blossoms.
Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein
A couple, for example, with no more than a tent pitched on the sidewalk as home, are happy to be photographed intimately, showing their naked love for one another.
“In Skid Row I know people, and the way you get pictures it is so complicated,” The street photographer attempted to explain her stunning photographs of Los Angeles’ underbelly. “I just think if you have a rapport with someone, and you have things in common with that person, and you talk to them and you come down here, and you’re taking pictures…they just get a sense of you. A lot of times I feel that people want to be part of the picture too. They see me around with people they know from the neighbourhood, it is kind of like they want to be part of it. But it is really hard to say how things come about. I will follow someone around and it just happens. You can’t plan anything out…it is trust on both sides.”
Originally from Michigan and now living in New York, her friends have been astonished that she still has her equipment after visiting such areas.
“The fact that you still have your camera says that you are somebody down there,” she says. “I have far less trouble (in Skid Row) than I do in other parts. I have the worst trouble in Paris. I had trouble in Los Angeles outside of Skid Row. I just think that it is not a huge neighbourhood and people just get to know you.”
The telephone line to New York disrupts. We have a gentle fade and swift return where her voice modulates and I miss some of what what she says. But it eventually clears and we are soon discussing how street photography happened for her.
“I took a trip to Europe with my son three years ago and I started taking pictures on my iPhone,” She explained. “I just started chasing people around. I have always been really interested in people. As an artist I always chose – when I was a graphic artist – I always chose very unusual body types and facial types, so I, basically, found myself doing the same thing with the iPhone.”
She no longer uses her iPhone for work, and runs through the cameras she now owns – her Fujifilm xpro2 and her X-T2.
“I only used my iPhone when I started, I currently use a Sony A7r3,” she confides and adds : “I worked very hard to develop my skills with a camera”
She pauses, speaks to her son, we wait, a few seconds tick by.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says matter-of-fact as she returns to how she got started. “Just chasing people around taking all these pictures, and I started googling it, and I found street photography, and I found it on Instagram and it just sort of took off from there, and, it’s just totally changed my life.”
In Paris, as in Skid Row, many of her photographs revolve around those less fortunate. What is, impressive, however, is the way she has used angles to get close to her subjects and photograph them.
Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein
Some were taken from street level, giving the impression that you are there with them on the street. One woman prostrate on the ground begging is taken through the legs of someone walking past. We see the beggar, she is visible to us, but to the person above, who Stein has cleverly used to frame her photograph, she is invisible.
Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein
A young girl uses concrete for a mattress and cuddles into a – slightly unsettling – doll. The photograph is taken from street level, and at night, which gives it a very tender, yet unnerving feel to the frame. A very powerful, though poignant photograph edged with a gentle tenderness under a dark night sky and eerie, malevolent stars.
“Well to be perfectly honest I have had a lot of challenges in my life,” She says candidly. “My family, not myself, has trouble with substance abuse…my mother, and it has been a major problem in my upbringing. I think that…(is) why I have focused on it because its really been a major influence in my life. I can connect with an absolutely beautiful young girl on the street in New York City and we can take some great pictures because we have a connection so I don’t just connect with people in the underbelly. It is just that because I started out taking pictures in Los Angeles, and in Skid Row in particular, people associate me with that.”
Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein
She is right, and we should mention that she has a whole body of excellent work on other subjects. But it is clear this is what she gravitates toward and I push her gently.
“That’s a very strong part of my heart,” she says openly. “I tend to prefer people that are on the edge. Because I think that they have fewer boundaries they will be more honest and open. Whereas people who have a more complacent life have more barriers. I just tend to be more interested in people who tend to be more real. You know in the United States, a lot of people, and in many parts of Europe, live a life that is pretty free of drama. But, most of the world is in a state of…grief.”
Her voice tails off, she sounds surprised no one seems to realise this. Her photography, perhaps, is her attempt to bring this suffering to public notice? Look, she is saying with her photographs, this can happen! She even annotates some of her photographs with little bios of her subjects, mentions Christine, Leanne, India…
“This complacency and lack of urgency in many lives in western culture isn’t really the reality of much of the world,” She says with disdain in her voice. “I find it’s not really my reality either. My present life is very challenging at times. It doesn’t take a whole lot to change a life.”
Copyright ⓒ Suzanne Stein
Her shots unpack a world that is at once extraordinary and real. On San Julian Street a man carrying a cross passes in front of several people in wheelchairs. Here, on Skid Row is this symbolic of a belief that miracles can, somehow, still happen?
“My goals are to be able to shoot for non-profits NGO’s,” She tells me of her ambitions. “I really want to do stuff … I think is important. As my work gets out there to more people who officially shoot realism – my kind of realism – I am hoping that I can do work like that, (and) incorporate my style into images of people that I think are important.”
It would be the metaphorical cherry for the cake, and it seems a logical progression for a street photographer who is creative, brave, some might argue foolhardy, but above all extremely talented. Hers, is a drive to photograph the realities of the world and Suzanne Stein is a lot more than just the Los Angeles underbelly.
Suzanne Stein is a street photographer who flirts with documentary photography and whose work might yet crossover into photojournalism, but who cares? The powerful bleakness, tenderness, and occasional beauty of her photographs show someone at the very top of her game.
To see more of Suzanne’s Photography visit suzannesteinphoto.com
And Follow Suzanne on instagram @suzanne_stein
2 Comments
Excellent work Suzanne. Always an inspiration.
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