Nils Jorgensen is a good example of Street photography, although quite humorous street photography. His photos, although appear like they might be staged, are mostly spur of the moment images where he’s seen something happening at the perfect moment to take a photo, exactly like Documentary Photography, except instead of focusing on political issues or ‘newsworthy’ subjects, he has chosen to try and take more humorous photos among the public.
his website: http://nilsjorgensen.com
Some of his images are more ‘artsy’ photos, but the majority seem to show either something unusual, that doesn’t normally happen, or photos taken at just the right moment to be funny.
The way he takes his photos is similar to the way that I have been taking photos for my ‘Gatherings’ project, the majority of the time I don’t go out know exactly what and where i’ll be taking photos, but I take my camera and if I see a moment or place worth photographing, i’ll take a photo. Jorgensen doesn’t do a whole ‘photo shoot’ where everything is planned and he has organised people to be there etc, he just waits for the right moment and captures what is naturally happening around him.
Another photographer who takes this style of images is Todd Gross. Again, he goes into the public and when he see’s something interesting happening, he photographs it.
I think this style of photography really intrigues me because a lot of the time, street photography and photojournalism/documentary photography is used to show all the bad stuff happening, fights, police, gun violence, political issues, but this style of street photography is used to make people smile about all the little coincidences or funny moments happening everywhere, and it reminds you that not everything that is worth photographing and reporting has to be serious.
This kind of photography also reminded me of Andreas Gursky, he takes very large scale images, but then focuses in on individual things happening within the image, for example with this large image of a swimming pool, he cropped down to point out all the individual things going on in a situation, which you may not ordinarily notice when looking at the photograph as a whole, whilst it may not be humorous as such, it shows all the different things all happening at the same time, like little fights in the pool or an intimate moment between certain people.
