Panelist Bruce Byers sent me his book Street Moments (which you can buy at www.streetmoments.com or read here) and I thought I’d give my thoughts on it here for the site. The BLUF (bottom line up front) is that if you’re a fan of street photography in New York City, you’ll dig this book.
The book is composed of about 80 still black and white images from New York City from 1973 til 2009 all shot on film. The book is a perfect bound paperback with high-quality prints inside. Bruce places one image per page giving the viewer the opportunity to soak up each one individually.
At certain points in the book Bruce will focus on a specific theme or story. For instance at one point he puts two very similar photos of few people sitting on a seat in a subway car. This first image features a woman with a peculiar expression, and in the next image she’s gone. There’s a definitely a story here to be told but won’t Bruce won’t tell you what it is, instead he’ll let you develop the story in your mind.
Other themes also expressed this way are witches, shadows and chairs. It feels like Bruce tried to pair as many of the photos together as possible it seems, trying to tie a significant element from each photo to one another. These elements might be similar looking people, a manhole cover or a type of composition. The composition and organization of the pages seems very deliberate and well thought out.
If you’re looking for an overall narrative or driving story, you won’t find one here. There is very little writing in the book, mostly and introduction, and then your taken right into the photos. None of the photos have captions, only titles, but your not even given the titles until the last page of the book. If I were to make any recommendation it would have been to include the titles with the photos. Having to go back and forth between a glossary and page became cumbersome, but it’s interesting to know the title and year the photo was shot as it gives a bit more context to the story going on.
What I liked most about the book, and I think it’s main worth, is the feeling it brought me of being back in NYC. I lived in and around NYC for about five years so I have a pretty good understanding of the city and can place most of the locations shown. While these photos were shot over the course of four decades, these all look like photos that could have been taken over the course of a long walk through the city. That isn’t a knock, though, but I think a testament to the rich and diverse landscape that NYC provides to any enterprising and skilled photographer willing to take it on as a subject.
