About Stupid Attacks and Street Photography

A comment on an old post accused me of photographing only women, and rather than let it sit, I want to take it apart, because the accusation says far more about how people look at images than about how I make them. What follows is less a defense than an explanation of what I am actually doing when I raise the camera, and why the subject is rarely the point.

To provide context and for the sake of truth, I'm sharing the link to the article in question: 5 Reasons Why 35mm...

This article was published on October 14, 2021, on my official blog. The photos were taken during the pandemic, when taking photos was quite complicated and finding a soul, possibly without a mask, was quite difficult. It's worth noting that the post in question is nearly five years old and sits among hundreds of others. 

Every now and then, a comment reveals much more than it seems. Not so much about the object being observed, but about the observer. This often happens in photography, because the image is an imperfect mirror: it reflects something, but it filters that something through the gaze of the viewer.

When someone claims that a photographer "only photographs women," it's worth asking what that claim is actually built on. Usually it's a partial reading: one post, one gallery, one afternoon's worth of frames. At best, it's a superficial reading. At worst, it's a shortcut for dismissing 20 years of work without engaging with any of it.

The error stems from a profoundly flawed idea: that photography should represent a sort of statistical balance, an arithmetic parity between subjects, as if each project were a census and not the result of context, time, chance, and authorial choice. Photography, especially documentary or street photography, doesn't work that way. It never has. A body of work is not a ledger to be audited for proportional representation, and reading it as one misunderstands what the work is.

Scrolling through a single post, or worse still, finding a single piece of content among hundreds and using it to construct an accusatory narrative, is a fragile operation. A single post is a sample of one. It can tell you what I photographed on a given day, in a given place, under the conditions of that day. It cannot tell you what I photograph.

There's another, more interesting aspect. Observations like this one rarely turn back on the viewer's own gaze. Why do you see "only women" in a frame where a woman occupies a fraction of the composition? What draws the eye there and holds it? That question is at least as interesting as anything you could ask me, and it goes unasked because the problem is always shifted to the author, never the reader. And it matters here, because as those familiar with my photography know by now, in my compositions it's never just the subject, but also the entire context, which is often more relevant than the subject itself. I'm a photographer who works a lot with space, as I've often emphasized in the writings shared on this blog.

Photography is not neutral, but neither is the viewer. When a complex body of work is sorted into simplified categories, what gets lost isn't the photographer's reputation. It's the work itself.

It makes little difference whether behind certain interventions there's simply a misperception or, rather, the desire to provoke. In both cases, the result is the same: a discussion that's no longer about photography, but about something else.

Photography, on the other hand, requires time, attention, and honesty. Even from the viewer.

My Gaze, Before the Subject

My photography almost always begins before the subject.
It stems from a perception.

I don't go out into the street looking for people, categories, or roles. I go out looking for a certain tension in the air, an atmosphere, a vibration, a particular energy that's difficult to define but immediately recognizable when it manifests. It's something that has more to do with a state of mind than with what's visible. A space charged with meaning, a moment that seems to hold its breath.

Street photography, as I experience it, is a stream of consciousness. There's no rigid pattern, no preconceived idea of what should happen. There's a constant listening to the world, and to myself within that world. I walk, I observe, I absorb. Sometimes for hours without shooting. Then, suddenly, everything falls into place.

When I shoot, I'm often not photographing a person, but the energy that flows through that person in relation to the space, the light, the context. The subject becomes an element among other elements. It's never isolated, never placed on a pedestal. It's part of an invisible construction that happens before the shot is taken. 

In this sense, my work as a street photographer is deeply connected to my experience as a portrait photographer. Even in portraiture, I never seek a pose, but a suspension. A moment when the mask loosens and something more authentic emerges. The context changes, the degree of control changes, but the intention remains the same. On the street, control is minimal; in portraiture, it's shared. In both cases, what interests me is what happens between me and the other person, not the other person alone.

There's also a metaphysical dimension that runs through many of my images, especially when the landscape comes into play. Urban spaces, architecture, voids, margins. Places that seem to await something or someone. It is in contemplation that these images find fulfillment. They don't demand an immediate reading; they demand time. Silence. Presence.

Perhaps this is also why my gaze is sometimes misunderstood. Because it's not descriptive, it's not didactic, it's not reassuring. It doesn't rely on visual or narrative clichés. It's a gaze born from living photography as an existential experience, not as a formal exercise.

I photograph as I live. With attention, with respect, but also with a certain restlessness. And I believe that this, ultimately, is what you truly see in my images. Not who's inside, but how the world, for a moment, decided to show itself.

Mine is neither snobbery nor arrogance. What I read and what I watch end up in the frame whether I intend them to or not, and I'd say the same of any photographer. If you want to understand a body of work, study the photographer alongside it. Look at what they photograph, but also at how they write and how they talk about what they've made. In more than two decades in this profession, I've met photographers whose reading and thinking inform every frame they make, and others who have never asked themselves why they photograph at all. The difference shows in the work. 

The dimensions of communication aren't compartmentalized; they're intertwined. A photographer who can't articulate what a body of work is doing, in writing or in conversation, is working with one hand tied. Try reading a work synopsis carefully. A solid cultural foundation should help you understand the value of a work, and this applies both to the photographer, as an author, and to the viewer of the visual experience.