I never really set out to create the ‘100 Faces Project’. All I really do is wander around and point a camera in the general direction of strangers on the street. It was all just street photography to me; a continuation of After the Coal Dust.
It was only when I began to notice that I’d been far closer to some people than I realised. They were more like ‘portraits’ in some ways than traditional street photographs. People started asking if they were staged photos in the studio. Of course, nothing was staged, 99% of the subjects never knew I had photographed them.
The pictures that were pretty much just faces seemed to be divorced from ‘street photography’. After all, street photography really needs some context. That was the main reason I had for not using long lenses. I wanted the environment to be part of the image, even if the face was the focal point. So, it seemed that, almost inadvertently, I had a collection of photos that were neither traditional street photographs or formal portraits. A series of candid street photos without much street.
Studio work changes the dynamic totally. The photographer has to arrange the lighting, pose the sitter to a certain extent, and the subject has to give ‘approval’ to the end result. Although I have done some studio work, it isn’t for me. The result seemed like no more than a high-quality form of flattery. There is a place for this, of course, but there are far better practitioners than me. Also, the idea of kids (who were only there because they had been bribed with a McDonalds)bouncing off the studio walls was, to me, far more daunting than photographing strangers on the street.
I needed to come up with a middle ground. ‘Studio’ style photos without the artifice. I had the photos and if the ‘street’ aspect didn’t really add to the picture, why not remove it?
So that was it: candid street photos with totally black backgrounds. Real expressions in natural light. The type of expressions impossible to get in the studio.
I’m ok with Photoshop but extracting backgrounds isn’t my idea of fun. I have a motto that if the picture takes over five minutes to process, then it’s probably not worth processing. If the background was too difficult to remove then it would remain. Just another ‘street photograph’.
Some of these street portraits were well received online and in the exhibitions so they became a series of their own – the 100 Faces project. The idea would eventually be to display one hundred of these alongside each other. A single gallery wall full of faces.
Gallery wall space of such scale is difficult to find so it’s still waiting to happen, especially as the 100 faces is now well over 400.
*Articles first appeared as part of the Progres Festival
