Two More Wonderful Portfolios

What's called "Street" appears to be one of the main currents of photography among ambitious and skilled practitioners these days. It's a photography of found subjects that takes its style cues and approaches mostly from reportorial and documentary photography*, but without the focus on an event or a story, and with aims closer to pop art. Its closest analog might be populist art such as tattoos, customized hot rods (famously the subject of Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby), or pop-songs-by-the-people before the music industry gets sinks its chompers into them.

...But I shouldn't get started on deconstructing Street as a genre. (There's a rabbit-hole.) Basically just wanted to pass on two more photographers in case you have a hankering to look at more:

Photo by TC Lin

"Street photographs" don't actually have to include the street...they can, though. This is by TC Lin, one of the photographers in the Burn My Eye collective, who comments here on TOP as "poagao" or "TC." You can see more of his work here. I particularly like Portfolio 2, and the one of the new-style photographers and the bored guard in the museum.

Photo by Alexander Petrosyan

Alexander Petrosyan is a staff photographer at коммерсант (kommersant, or "businessman"), a daily newpaper in Russia that covers business and politics. He also enjoys a growing reputation as a chronicler and poet-photographer of St. Petersburg. A good article published at Huck magazine this past week emphasizes the street-photographer aspect of his work. More of his St. Petersburg photographs and his photojournalism can be seen at his website.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

*...with a smaller dose, perhaps, of those "amazing happenstance" kinds of photos that crop up on certain populist clickbait-type websites, such as these for example...

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

At street level
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jeffrey MacMillan: "Am stunned by the photos of Alexander Petrosyan. As said in the Huck article, they are short stories, each of them. Poetic. Comedic. I made the mistake of going to his blog. My cameras may be going on Craigslist soon. He has such a ridiculous number of notable shots. It may help that Petrosyan is in such an insanely photogenic city."

TC: "Wow, thanks for the kind words, Mike. I always enjoy opening up the browser each morning to see what's new on TOP, but it was kind of a surprise to start reading the post, scroll down and think, 'Hey, that looks familiar...is that...oh!'"

Comments

[Andy Kochanowski]

Hey Mike, thanks for the note on Tc and Burn My Eye. In addition to being a wonderful photographer, he is a musician and all around good guy.

Andy

[Herman]

Boots on the Ground

[Kenneth Tanaka]

There are no sharper eyes or quicker shutters in the "street" today than TC Lin's. He has a real knack for organizing his frames and snagging a gesture or detail to make it cohere.

TC and I have never met in-person but we go back a number of years when we were co-participants in a serial film project (pre-YouTube!). I always enjoy seeing his latest batch of images, as well as those from his colleagues at BurnMyEye.

[Chester Williams]

That beach image "Magic carpet" is incredible. What an eye...or two.

[John Wilson]

Number 5 in portfolio 1 is hilarious! And I absolutely love number 6. Wish my neighbourhood/city was as colourful and whacky.

[Alan Carmody]

TC Lin has quite an interesting life story, as detailed in Wikipedia. He is a rare case of reverse migration from the US to Taiwan.

Of course, we don't care about all that, and just gape slack-jawed at his eye for the moment and his photographic reflexes.

[Adam Lanigan]

Heh heh. The water shot reminds me of a similar one I took while shooting a local open street event a couple years back. It was Father's Day, so one group had a "Dunk Your Dad" booth set up. Dad, in this case, was not as oblivious to what was going on as the above airman, having been able to raise his hood ninja-like just prior to the deluge from above.

[Steve Rosenblum]

Thanks for these and the previous links to "Street" photographers. I would likely never find them otherwise.

[Steve Rosenblum]

Also, Herman, I love the photo essays on your site. Inspires me to approach my photography more in a story telling mode.