Another Street Portrait endeavor
I know that I mentioned that I went out and set up another portrait station a week or so ago, but I haven’t had a chance to share much about the experience. It has been a busy last few weeks and for that I am grateful.
Anne and I live in a neighborhood called Montrose… It is a lovely part of town. We live right on a light-rail line which Anne uses nearly every day for work and nearly all of the studios and offices that I work out of are in the neighborhood. Lots of little shops and stores. Lots of interesting people. We moved here without knowing much about the neighborhood and I couldn’t be happier with how it has worked out. Actually this whole street portrait project was originally conceived as something to do within the neighborhood. The intersection of Montrose and Westheimer is high traffic area for some of the most interesting people that I have seen just about anywhere in the country. Unfortunately, I just haven’t had a chance to set up here, yet. Then I remembered that Montrose is also home to one of the country’s largest and longest annually occurring GLBT Pride Parades. It began in 1979 and attracts nearly 200,000 people a year…just about 5 blocks from my apartment. Westheimer (a MAJOR thoroughfare) is completely shut down for more than a couple miles and all kinds of crazy floats and crazy people flood the streets for a pretty raucous day of festivities. Essentially, it is the perfect place to set up a portrait station. I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to pull it off… I made a plan and managed to get in touch with the photo editors of the Houston Chronicle hoping to get a press pass, but it ended up falling through… I knew that I wanted to be as close to the Montrose/Westheimer intersection (ground zero!) as possible, but without credentials, who knows… I invited my friend and video guy, Trae to come out there and shoot some video interviews. Anne volunteered to come help funnel people towards the backdrop…
So, we packed up the pelican cases, waited for a gap in passerbys, and rolled our gear into the flow of the crowd. We ended up running into the owner of a small strip center who allowed us to set up in a parking space about 100 feet from the parade route.
The original, “back-of-the-napkin” plan:
(that we of course changed when we actually got out there!)
Backdrop up, lights up, cameras out, and off we went…
Some images:
So the big idea behind this project is really simple: I believe that portraiture is powerful. I believe that a good portrait of yourself can be a salve. It helps you see things that you might not otherwise notice. I have found that simply making an image of someone can, and does, convey great value and respect. I believe that too often portrait-making is focused on the fancy people, the rock stars, the celebrities…the people who sell things with their photographs. I envision this project as some sort of Populist Photography Experiment. By the people, for the people.
I always ask people if I can make their photograph and that I will give them a copy in return. You stop for a minute, let me make an interesting image, then I give you a photograph. That is our transaction. I print out cards with a # and an email address and then I photograph everyone holding their number so that when they get home and decide to email me, they can just tell me their number and I can send them the images…
The cards:
Trae would grab people after I shot their image and ask a few questions. He is a fearless interviewer. I am in the process of editing the video into a more doc style piece, but in the meantime, wanted to share just a little bit of the moving images.
Street Portraits from Ryan Booth on Vimeo.
Well, needless to say, it was a great time. We weren’t out there very long… the sun was going down, the roads were filling up with people, and I filled up over 50 gigs in about an hour and a half. Plus my friend, Bob, had a gallery opening and we needed to get to the reception…
All that to say, I am really excited to set up again soon, keep shooting and hope to keep communicating with media outlets to see if anyone is interested in producing a series…
What do you think? Send me an email…
