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TANGENTS

Street Photography

BY IHTISHAM KABIR
With the invention of photography in 1839, it became possible to make precise copies of fleeting instants of time. TWo steps made it possible: creating a two-dimensional projection of the three-dimensional world, and ‘'fixing” that projection on some medium such as film.
Photography changed the way people look at the world. A famous example: Eadward Muybridge's highspeed photographs of a horse proved that historical paintings of galloping horses were incorrect, and if horses really galloped the way they had been painted, they would fall.
It was as if a "pause” button for observing life had been invented. This led to new ways of looking at life and new genres of art.
Street photography is one such genre. It aims to capture the pure, raw expression of life on the street as people go about their business. The photographer's desire is to record the poetry of life as it unfolds, preferably without being observed.
A momentary expression or gesture, an instant of joy or sorrow, an unfolding drama, a dream passing before the eyes, the split-second when figures come together in perfect geometry - these are all subjects of street photography, which, at its best, transcends the mundane by capturing the essence of life.
While many photographers made their mark in street photography, it was the Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson who made the most remarkable photographs in this genre. His tool of choice was the Leica camera. Invented in 1922, Leica was the first small handheld camera using 35mm film.
Before then, cameras had been bulky wooden boxes which lived on heavy tripods.
Cartier-Bresson, who had studied surrealist painting and Zen Buddhism, once said that photography could "fix eternity in an instant.” Armed with the Leica he went, nimble on his feet, finding and capturing those instants. By dressing unobtrusively, hiding his camera, and moving about quickly, he was able to observe without being observed.
A result was a book of photographs called The Decisive Moment. In it, moments captured from everyday life, mostly life in the streets, are imbued with such grace, energy, even miracle, that sixty years after its publication -and thirty years after I first saw it - its photographs still take my breath away.
Today, photographers all over the world practice street photography. Recently, a Street Photography Festival in London attracted over 30000 attendees.
While it is legal, in general, to photograph anyone in a public place such as a street, it is important for a street photographer to be sensitive to the subject. A possible guideline: do no harm to the subject with your photography.
In many ways, Bangladesh is a street photographer's paradise. Not only are the streets throbbing with life, but people are, by and large, friendly and enjoy being photographed. This is in sharp contrast to Western countries, where, unless one is in a big city, one cannot find many people in the streets; and people in those big cities, more often than not, are suspicious of photographers.
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