bikes and things

I’ve been a big fan of Crossing Paths for a while now and have really enjoyed seeing Niall’s images appear after his travels around the UK.

I’m generally skeptical of street photography as in my opinion an excuse for quite lazy and cliched work. Often this is of the back of people’s head against amusingly cropped bill boards or someone smoking in an alley. There are exceptions to this but good street photographers seem to be rare. There’s also something about that magic moment which is so crucial to street photography that most are unable to catch, again all in my opinion. I was also never really a fan of the sartorialist street photography, but mainly because I’m not a fashion junkie, having said that I was completely in awe of Bill Cunningham having watched his film and appreciated his dedication and engagement with the New York fashion scene.

Having said all of that Niall’s work seems really captivates me and seems to have blended these two genres into something personal to him and at the same time far more inspiring and touching. Having thought about this for a while I feel that it’s the difference between being an observer and someone who engages with their subject which makes one have more value to me. Niall’s work perhaps veers more towards portraiture than street photography yet with it also has this wonderful feeling of serendipity.

Niall manages to capture something unique of the personality of the person in their clothing, location, stance, their expression and character. The relationship of colours to the backgrounds he chooses always fascinates me. There’s so much to get out the images and what is nice about the above video is that you get to see some of the engagement that goes in to making these photos and how he relates to the people on the street. Part of the reason I am in awe of this project is that chatting to people on the street is hard, I don’t mean in a raised eyebrows nod, huh, shared event style but actually stopping someone, asking about them, taking an interest in them as a person and then taking their portrait. The act of making a portrait seems to be a incredibly intimate process which is what elevates this from other genres of street photography for me. There’s also a form of celebration of the ordinary person and the UK as a whole. We’re pretty bad at celebrating our uniqueness but the video seems to highlight how much delight Niall seems to take from this island of ours and all the fascinating people that inhabit it, a kind of love letter to the UK if you like. I can’t wait to get hold of a copy of the book!