WTF…fake snapshots?

Street Photography

I love fake snapshots. Only apparently random shots for aesthetics, but with a content that sometimes emerges at a second glance.

This post is the result of several requests received to explain the last point of the post others truth when comes Street Photography. I would like to take this opportunity to say that through these reflections will come the new ebook. So consider this article a tasty preview of the book that will.

So, what are the fake snapshots? I think that i spoke about this topic on this post. Although I am able to appreciate the beautiful images, my aesthetic research in Street Photography has always been oriented to the approach hardcore.

I am conscious like Street Photographer that the content is the important thing. In Street Photography we can turn a blind eye on the composition, on one foot cut out but not on the content.
We are not landscape photographers, we are not fashionistas. Since I discovered this world, the reference to a website like in public is always alive in me and in my photographic research. I am not talkin’ bout emulation, but it’s important clarify on what I’m attracted in Street Photography.

For example, i like some work that can be labelled “cinematic street photography”, for example i love the work of Danny Santos. I think that is a more “commercial” approach to the street, but i like. But if we are talkin’ about my photography and what i love to do, i can see to the work of Jack Simon, for example.

“Fake snapshot” is a neologism created by me to describe a false random photograph. It could appears a photo made by a beginner, or a tourist, aesthetically, but at a keen eye, at a second or third glance you can see the content.

So I refer to the shots that are not spectacular for aesthetics but you can find a great justaxpoitation, or a contrast…or a particular association among different and bizarre elements in the composition.

“Fake snapshot” for me is the essence of this genre. I am not Henri Cartier Bresson, and i’ll become never him. And not even I care. I don’t want to do Fine Art. I want to tell the life through my eye.

I want to especially capture the surreal, the complex composition, the bizarre combination among elements, the striking moment.

There is nothing more beautiful than telling with simplicity: I do not want to make beautiful pictures, but I want to take photographs that make us think, that ask questions, that amaze the observer.

I prefer to be guided by instinct and emotion of the moment, an instinct filtered through the experience, with the composition which is realized on its own: life flows and I capture it, with a (fake) snapshot.

This article originally written for my blog. Check it out.