The Unbearable
Lightness of Being (a street photographer)
Text &
Photos – Andrew Stark
“To become a
spectator of one’s own life ... is to escape the suffering of life”.
- Oscar Wilde (The
Picture of Dorian Gray)
Is street photography indicative of a particular personality type?
The thought first landed,
rather clumsily, as I lay crumpled beneath the frenetic Cahill Expressway in
the heart of my birth city; Sydney, Australia. It was a glorious late February
afternoon back in 2007 and I’d spent the previous moments frivolously pondering
just why it is that seagulls don’t eat peanuts.[1]
Cars and trains rattled and swooshed up-top, as thoughts shifted seamlessly to
psychological make up and workings of the mind: thoughts of street photography,
me, and why?
I’ve been
photographing on the streets of Sydney since my teen years of the late 1970s.
It’s been a long personal journey. Or has it? For I’ve long held the view that
street photography is as much a personality classification as it is an art
form? It surely all begins with genetics. It has to be a predetermined
disposition; this compulsion to observe, that thirst for decoding the true
essence of place. A journey of a million steps, on a rambling trip to nowhere. Roll-up
Roll-up, watch the solitary man walk in circles. For just as the male bowerbird
is programmed to seek out all blue, a chronic introvert with an inquisitive
bent, is left by a big city to wander and to collate.
Street photographers
come in many shapes and forms. The genre has long been hailed as a creative
outlet for the everyman; ordinary citizens able to capture life just as they
find it. For some however, street photography is much more than a creative
dalliance. To loner types like me, street photography provides a kind of
alfresco half-way house for social connection.
For six decades now,
disconnection has hovered menacingly in the shadows of my life. This awkward
reticence remained manageable for the first half a century, yet as the years peeled
away; primary relationships fractured, relatives passed, and life has gotten
desperately thin.
In my 2010 book, “Escaping
into Life: A Psycho Study of the Contemporary Street Photographer”, I observed
- “My own social frailties are deeply etched; a claustrophobic shroud, by
now so familiar as to assume an everyday numbness”. Recalling the period; I
shake my head in disbelief. For back then, I seriously didn’t know the half of
it! A decade and a half ago; I was domiciled in a loving relationship; I was
co-parenting three young step kids and both my parents were alive. While my
circle was small, it was more than enough to fulfill my needs.
“Andrew Stark leads a
fairly solitary existence and his work is ever more autobiographical.
Detachment and the plight of the outsider are recurring themes.”
- Inara Walden (Museum
of Sydney, curator, 2006)
The more street photographer’s
lives one delves into, the more apparent it all becomes. This lonesome path
toward Nurse Ratchet and the Cuckoo’s Nest is well trodden. My 2010 book explored
the psychological traits of leading street photographers, finding many
introverted patterns. At the pointy end, there are genuine lone wolf
photographers such as; Garry Stochl, Angelo Rizzuto and Vivian Maier; who only
came to art-sphere prominence late in their lives, or posthumously.
More celebrated
practitioners, while less reclusive, did still exhibit touchstone elements. The
famous Henri Cartier Bresson was a terribly private man, unleashed in the most
public of domains. By all reports he was a highly principled individual yet
arrogant to a ‘T’, prickly to a ‘Y’ and pedantic to all and sundry.
Elliott Erwitt is
said to have grown up “a quiet, introspective boy and it was some time
before he spoke”. His father Boris recalled that when his son finally did,
it was with extraordinary precision, as if he’d been waiting until he had
something worthwhile to contribute. Later in life, Erwitt hid himself most
effectively behind an impenetrable shield of slapstick humour.
“I think that I was a
born loner. My mother was a single parent, working in a torpedo factory in the
Midwest, and I didn’t like school. I felt very isolated. And I could do both my
reading and my writing at the same time with a camera.” – Bruce Davidson (Magnum photographer -
USA)
Patricia Bosworth in
her 1984 biography of Diane Arbus claimed that Robert Frank was deeply
depressed when he took the photographs which formed his iconic book, The
Americans. The dark poet of street photography endured a life touched by
much tragedy. On a personal level, he was variously described as being; morose,
cagy, terse, polite, surly, gracious, unresponsive, eccentric, removed and
extremely quiet.
Garry Winogrand once
claimed that life was banal and that an artist deals with banality. The great
American street photographer was famously always in a rush. He had a manic need
to see around the next corner, and then the next ... to shoot copious amounts
of film. He reloaded like a quickdraw cowboy in a Tombstone gunfight. There was
an inherent urgency in all actualities of the man, aligning the association of
a haunted, nervous individual bustling to stay ahead of his own relentless
gloom.
Helen Levit is known
for her wonderful images of children photographed playing in the streets of
Harlem and the Lower East Side. She is said to have been an extreme introvert.
Leading a quiet existence, Levit never married and lived alone with a tabby cat
named Blinky.
Clare O’Neill writing
for NPR back in 2011, described New York street photographer Leon Levinstein as
having lived loneliness to the extreme.
“He never married, had few friends, and alienated those who wanted to advance
his career. Yet that same independent spirit informed the way he saw the world.
He could skulk through crowds, blend in, observe things that others would miss.
The very traits that alienated him from the world also allowed him to see it in
a unique way.”
There are so many
examples, but enough of greatness, let’s bring the chat back to me. I wonder
whether I could be accused of running some sort of introspective protection racket.
Have I been so damaged by past, personal interactions that I’m attempting to
avoid any future grief? I doubt it. It feels more complex than that.
Introversion, conservatism, fear of change, self-absorption ... and maybe I’m
swinging about, undiagnosed, on the autistic spectrum? Who would know?
I’ve always had a tendency
to obsess over whatever project I’m currently working on; fussing about, blinkered
and driven. I give it my unyielding attention, the focus of which has undoubtedly
come to the detriment of those social niceties’ normal human-beings like to foster.
While awkwardness in gatherings above about five people, has always been a
curse; at some point in my life, I reached an age where I stopped trying
altogether. I mean let’s face it, I’m not overly interested in someone’s
critique of last night’s movie, or how crazy the weather’s been, or why
coffee’s getting so expensive. And I’m damn sure no one in the room wants to
hear about my creepy habit of dancing in and about the city crowd, taking unsolicited
pictures of perfect strangers.
“The absolute absence
of a burden causes a man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, to
take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his
movements as free as they are insignificant.” - Milan Kundera (The Unbearable
Lightness of Being, 1984)
The great Czech
author was writing of Tomas, his lead character who made the conscious
decision to shun emotional commitment. To simplify his life: to
strip it back to almost nothing. The difference here is, while I’m convinced that
I’ve arrived at a similar place, my journey wasn’t instigated by a conscious
decision. I suggest that my dead-end dance was predetermined. Scripted
behaviour created by stultifying flaws that oscillate my own psychological orbit.
I had very little say in it. I’ve been shoehorned into a street photography holding
pen; reduced to slavishly chase life in the form of other people. Clutching my
candid camera, I mingle, I observe, I acknowledge - and yet, I baulk at taking
that next step. Genuine human interaction eludes me. Fated from day one, I now find
myself trapped in “half real” territory.
Before I drown in a
sea of self-absorption however, I must juxtapose my personal doom and gloom by
conceding that street photographers are many and varied. Having enjoyed the
stories of many talented snappers presented on the Street Photography Podcast, I raise my glass to those
psychologically well-adjusted, socially vital practitioners who move amongst us.
I wonder how they might
answer the question. Did you find street photography, or did street photography
find you? As melodramatic as it may sound; my four plus decades of wandering
Sydney streets has provided little more than a flimsy conduit to an outside
world of healthy human interaction. I find myself living a socially barren
existence from deep within a swirling mass of people. Tagging along with camera
in hand, I assume the hedging persona of a ghostly, pseudo person. It’s all
just a faintly cathartic, performance piece. My “lightness of being”, is
gliding five to ten feet away from my subjects. The act is intimate: the
connection real. Grabbing onto the end of that conga line, I won’t let go until
the music has died.
Andrew Stark ©
2025
[1] I ultimately figured it was due to their lack of teeth.
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