The City and the Shooter : The street photography of Andre Bogaert
The best photographs are multi-layered with meaning. True they are all open to individual interpretation but, for me, the best street photographers always have something to say and often more than one point to make.
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
We are looking up at a man who seems to be ferociously punching out messages on his mobile phone (Andre titles this one ‘Messaging on the Move’). He is slamming onto his touchscreen as if his frontal lobes depended on it as he travels across megacity Tokyo on the underground.
The beauty of this shot from London street photographer Andre Bogaert is the man’s hands, as they simultaneously hold the phone and send messages through the air to the unseen, unknown, person at the other end, perhaps miles away, perhaps in a different country?
In one shot we have a person travelling, messaging someone or something, and here in this one frame we have a metaphor for contemporary society. CPO – cell phone obsession.
He could be texting his partner to advise he is on his way home from work, or his boss to say he is going to arrive late in at work, he might be stalking some terrified woman, or he might simply be Googling the FA Cup winners in 1988 to win a bet with a friend (Wimbledon beat Liverpool 1-0)
Who knows but that is always the sign of a good shot.
“Photography is passion,” Andre Bogaert tells me. “I used to call it my hobby but my wife set me straight, it’s a passion to me.”
Most of the best photographers I have met or know are obsessed by their art. It is part of their DNA, part of their being and identity, inextricably linked to who they are and how they function as humans.
“Almost all my senses are heightened when I am on the street, camera around my neck.” Andre continues. “Looking for that story or trying to [pose] that question in just one frame. Trying to anticipate a meeting or coming together of people for that one moment so I can snap them.
“Also, I see a photograph in black and white. I know some wonderfully talented colour street snappers ; I am just not one of them. I prefer the interpretation of black and white over facsimile that colour is. Well… to my eye.”
Bogaert’s work is powerful, demanding that we analyse and wander around inside the frame trying to interpret what is going on in each shot.
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
At first glance, there is nothing so very unusual or intriguing about this shot. A group of well-dressed men with their arms around each other’s shoulders. I counted six heads, there might be seven. They could be a group of gangsters? Guests at a wedding? But the genius is in catching the curious look of one of their number. The man looks young and mean and staring over at Andre as if he is about to question the lensman.
‘Hey! Whadda the f….’
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
A woman in a headscarf and glasses sits looking thoroughly miserable at a table. We are peeking, in that microsecond, into her life, wondering if she is meeting someone, or what she is thinking about? A relationship gone wrong? The discovery that her partner is playing away from home? Can she no longer go back to her home life? Maybe she is just, innocently, passing time?
It is a classic study.
She is also in a cafe or at an outside cafe or some kind of bistro, a meeting place of some description, which amplifies and accentuates her solitude. In reflection in the background, we can see there are other people around.
“A little church square off Piccadilly (London),” Andre informs of the location. “I’d been snapping all morning up and down Piccadilly and in China Town and I like her. I needed a hot beverage to perk me up. I was in line at the stall and there she was, just about to partake of the coffee…got her before the caffeine had time to take its effect. Once again right time, right place. It helped she looked so good.”
It has me thinking of the importance of location, is there a Premier League of street photography cities? In recent times I have spoken to and written about street photographers from all around the world, Sao Paulo, Moscow and Naples, for example.
“I live in one of the best, if not the best, city for street snapping…..London!,” Andre reads my mind. “I’m lucky enough to live in the centre of town so it’s all there outside my front door.
“Street snapping is all about anticipating the moment you want to capture and you’ve got one chance. If you miss it, it’s gone forever. But if you’re lucky there will be another ‘masterpiece’ coming around the corner any time soon. The streets of London are my studio and they change every day. What am I saying? Every minute!”
Bogaert’s enthusiasm is infectious, listening to him makes you want to get out on the street, wander around checking shutter speed, aperture, ISO, observing everything that is going on all around.
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
Once again it is an interesting angle and we are looking up. His body language says I am struggling to hear you to an unseen other.
“By Covent Garden Underground station on Long Acre,” Andre quickly fills me in on the location like a police officer informing their station where an incident has occurred.
I expect him now to say : ‘Send reinforcements’.
“I try not to concentrate just on street level and look up sometimes,” he explains instead. “I heard someone say : ‘What did you say?’, and there he was. Again, manual focus, zone focus and a bit of luck. My ears helped my eyes on this one.”
I also wanted to interrogate Mr Bogaert on his belief that it is not the equipment that should be the photographer’s focus.
“Nowadays most cameras will do a passable to good job in capturing what you point them at,” Andre informed me matter-of-fact. “I’m not saying the kits not important. It’s so much easier if you feel comfortable with the camera you have around your neck.
“Also, it’s easier if you can visualise the frame in your head before lifting the camera up. So, I suggest you get to know your lens too. In fact, try shooting from the hip, or in my case belly. It works for me most of the time. I’ll just quote what I read somewhere written by a renowned photographer whose name escape me : ‘When people ask me what equipment I use, I tell them, my eyes.’”
The quote sounds vaguely familiar but Like Andre I can’t put a name to it. If you know – answers on a postcard?
Bogaert tells me he got started in street photography when he was 13 when his parents bought him an SLR and then a 50mm lens as Christmas and birthday gifts respectively.
“The cost of film and D&P (developing and processing) was always the limiting factor back then,” he revealed. “The first photography I remember was trying to photograph a snooker game in a scruffy club in North London. I was 14 and got thrown out. Can’t remember how the photos turned out.”
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
I really liked Andre’s photograph of an arm emerging from the dark interior of a car. It could be a single frame from a Martin Scorsese movie Mean Streets perhaps or Goodfellas. It has a gangster-like, sinister feel to it.
Copyright ⓒ Andre Bogaert
This, for me , is a wonderful and really quite tender shot. The girl looking back toward the photographer looks so happy to be hugging the man, I presume to be her father. But I could be wrong. As she hugs him, the man places a protective arm around her. For me it is her glance back that really tells the story of this shot. Her face is lit up with something akin to joy tells of her delight to be in this man’s arms. We can also tell by her body art she has a bit of a rebellious streak to her.
“It was on one of the cross streets between Broadway and 5th Avenue NYC,” Andre files his police report. “Around 42nd to 45th Street, I think. I’d just spent a couple of hours walking around Times Square snapping. It was early evening and I was heading back to my hotel. The girl just arrived in a taxi and saw the man waiting for her outside a bar. Right time, right place and a manual focus camera set to zone focusing.”
Andre says that COVID has put paid to many of his travel plans for now. He admits to loving the sprawl and opportunity afforded by both Tokyo and Bangkok.
“Life is never the same one day to the next,” he tells me thoughtfully. “I feel as if I blink, I will miss it!”
*Andre Bogaert uses a Leica M10D/28MM F5.6 and a Ricoh GRIII. He informs me the one piece of kit he never leaves home without is his eyes…
Visit Andre’s Website at Bogaert
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