Engagement--from Candid Stranger to Willing Participant

Diane Arbus took her approach of candid street photography to one of getting to know the characters as willing participants. The strength of her images includes the level of engagement with her characters and allows her to get closer both physically and emotionally. She commented that “she needed to get closer, physically and emotionally. So she asked permission, got to know people, listened to their stories.” This is engagement.

I put gathered together one portfolio of images for a 2015 exhibit entitled Lives Lived: Engaging with Rural Americans in which I chose images that showed engagement with individuals in a different way than I normally would capture them--in a moment in time. While the images in the portfolio achieved my stated goal of engagement it missed the magic of capturing an unplanned activity (to me) in the context of the individual`s social environment.

For example, I was strolling along a side street in Plattsburgh, NY and noticed this young man doing chin-ups in the doorway of his store. I was unable to capture the moment in the way I would have liked to from a social context photographic way. As an alternative, I took the opportunity to start a discussion about his store and his thoughts on being a "New York City boy" who I found out was currently living in upstate Plattsburgh with his girlfriend having just opened up a pipe store. This short engagement led to asking him permission to recreate the pose in the doorway that originally caught my attention.

Meek, Plattsburgh, NY 2015

I often wonder if I had caught the same image in the social context photographic way would it have been as rich in texture as this engaged imaged. Look at some of the other images in the portfolio and decide for yourself.