So, what's going on?
TLDR; I'm doing street photography now, every Sunday this section will have new updates, I love Trevor Wisecup.
If you're new here and you wanna know why I take pictures, you should read this. Today, I'm not writing about why I do it, but why I started doing it differently, and in a way it's kind of a sequel to the other one, so why not have the full picture, right?
So, my "street photography phase" began, like Priscilla said when flipping through the hundreds of failed attempts at candid photography on my camera's LCD. And I wasn't taking it at first, because I spent that whole day pondering about my photography journey and how I finally found my thing, and thought she was just being a bitter bitch and not considering the history and all that. But really, no, this might be just a phase, like the buildings phase, and the "movement pictures" phase, and the lights phase, although I have a feeling that this time things are a little different. Starting with the reason why.
If you read my journal, you're already familiar with how this all began: an actual camera perched in my hands, finding it too alien for my autodidactism I started seeing photography guides, that naturally flowed into experiencing other people's photography (something I had never done before in my life), and then I became aware of Trevor Wisecup.
Finally having an idea of how the photography landscape had been heretofore, my view changed, and my world expanded infinitely; because now it wasn't anymore a matter of comparing my pictures to themselves, but of being aware of my place within the whole. For the first time in my life, I actually considered the act of capturing moments as art, and so found in photographers, artists; therefore, in photos themselves, artworks. And I got why people actually visit this website to check on my picture updates, it's because there is art to them, they can be appreciated as art pieces, and I know that because Trevor Wisecup's pics are of the highest art one can find out there.
Sure, it might not be all that for you, but it is for me, and now I can definitely say it has changed my life. It all started with this video. After watching half of Simon d'Entremont's channel, Youtube began recommending me photography content, and one video that wouldn't escape my home page was that Trevor Wisecup interview. After a while, I decided to give it a chance, and what I found was completely and utterly stunning: he was out there, walking around New York streets looking for pictures to take, but not just any pictures: life. He made it his duty to capture life in those streets he strolled up and down every day, and that's exactly what he's accomplished and continues to achieve. I learned from him what street photography meant, and with that, the existence of this label I've escaped all this time for simple ignorance.
To me, photography as a whole boils down to two different groups: you're either taking pictures of people, or taking pictures of things. You can take pictures of people like they're things, as well as take pictures of things like they're people, but for the visual world it is either one or the other. Capturing people might mean capturing living-life, while with things, you're likely capturing still life—nature which is dead. So, for example, you're walking down 42nd street, and you see this little kid petting a stray dog, and the dog is all happy and wiggly, you snap a photo of the scene, trying to capture the feeling: that's life, in all its humanity and emotion. But say you're out in nature and there's a pretty cute mountain winking at you, and you think she's so pretty, and you must take a picture of her, so you do, but when that photo is developed, and you're sitting on your favorite armchair with the envelope in hands, itching to finally look back at that dear memory of when you felt desired by that super cute mountain, you pull out the sticky sheet of photography paper and what you see is just a mountain; she's still pretty, nature is pretty, things can look nice, and that will be your most popular print ever, but you'll never find in it the human feeling of that day when. This is photography, as far as I've learned. For the whole time I've been shooting I'm in a constant battle to find my place, to find my thing, and thanks to tREVOR, I might finally be able to shout for the whole world to hear, that I'm a photographer of life.
That has always been my desire, to capture life, but I've always failed in doing so because ever since I started shooting, I've been taking pictures of things, and of people like they're things. Why? Because I didn't want to be intrusive and would rather watch from afar. So that's how my vision was captured, distant, impartial, lacking the many individual qualities subjects within life naturally emanate. Life seen from afar isn't life, it's a thing. (When you're seeing a big number of people, like the audience of a live show in one of those drone videos, they all morph into a mantle of skin color; but if you're amongst them, taking pictures right then and there, you're gonna find individuality, and you're going to find the human, and you're gonna find life.)
This realization transformed my art, and made it a little more like me, specially with photography. I am highly sociable and am not afraid of socializing, but with a camera in my hands I felt alien, so photographer-me wasn't me-me; with street photography I found the excuse that allows me to be myself in photography contexts, and it's given me freedom I have never before experienced. Now, the only moment I feel alive is out there, shooting—my home is in the streets—and anything that goes against that is synonym with depression, is not living life like I should.
Therefore, The Trove is also changing in order to accommodate this new era. There will still be copious amounts of pictures published here, involving and not the concept of street photography, but segregation will be applied.
Updates will happen once a week, every Sunday or so, with a shit ton of stuff. So come around often to check on my progress as I hone my skills as a documentarian of life.