HIT THE STREETS

F E AT U R E H IT TH E ST R EE TS

All images © William Castellana Street photography is one of the most challenging image-making genres, but when you live in New York there’s no shortage of interesting subjects. Matty Graham talks to William Castellana about shooting from the hip in the Big Apple.

reat street photography is revered and

Gfor good reason when compared to other image-making genres. When shooting landscapes, photographers only have to battle the elements; in portraiture, photographers have models ready to follow their instructions. But in street photography you’re at the mercy of the cold asphalt and all those who tread on it. Technique, people skills, instinct and courage are all needed in equal measure to produce successful frames and William Castellana makes it look easy.

By trade, the New York-based professional shoots still lifes and architecture, but it’s Castellana's surroundings in the Big Apple that precipitate the segue into street photography as he captured the inhabitants of Williamsburg. We caught up with him to find out more about his unique shooting st yle.

Can you tell us a lit tle about yourself and how you got involved in photography? After graduation I started to freelance as both a photographer and lighting technician focusing primarily on commercial still life. Since then my photos have been acquired by more than 50 museums, won numerous awards and appeared in many publications such as Communication Arts, Creative Quarterly, Rangefinder, Newsweek, Time, New York, Bloomberg Businessweek and Los Angeles.

How would you describe your photographic st yle? In 2014 I undertook a photographic project Above left Two men crossing street Above right Shadow

whose genre and subject matter were completely foreign to me, both as a photographer and individual. Up until then I spent the majority of my photographic career focusing on the precise art of still life; whose challenge I believe is to animate the seemingly inanimate. My foray into street photography happened on a whim and was partly influenced by a remark a magazine writer made in reference to my work. She said: ‘Your black & white photos are absent of any real people, but there is a life to what you’re seeing.’ That remark really struck a chord and got me thinking as to why I had been avoiding the human subject all these years.

The technical approach of still life photography is diametrically opposed to street photography in that the former is a more methodical and planned process and the latter is less controlled. Segueing to street photography was a way for me to experience life firsthand – freeing me from the process of making stuff up – life was there in plain view ready to be extracted and composed out of its frenetic and chaotic flow.

Influenced by famous street photographers such as Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as by the tenets of cinéma-vérité, I set out to photograph my neighbours in the one-half ›

Men inspecting lulav during Sukkot

square mile area below Division Avenue, which demarcates the religious from the secular communities of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The photographs in this series are constrained to the neighbourhood view since my outsider status made access to a more privileged look impossible.

In their simplest sense, the images in this series form a social document of a people and a place; namely, a sect of Hasidic Jews known as the Satmars. This sect of Hasidic Jews was founded in Satu Mare, Romania, by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum in the early 20th century. After the Second World War Teitelbaum settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to lay the groundwork for a religious ideology that would launch one of the largest Hasidic movements in the world. Since Teitelbaum’s death, the Satmar community has grown exponentially and continues to thrive through closely observed traditions and social mechanisms.

As an outsider, what I witnessed through my camera during that period was new and unique compared to my everyday routine and what the rest of the city’s inhabitants were pulsing to. For me, street photography is about the preservation of time and place – a kind of poetry that distils both in equal measure.

Can you talk us through your approach to street photography? I shoot from the hip and have my camera pre-focused at six feet, so my technique is extremely simple. It’s a common practice that’s been employed by many of the great street photographers from past to present. Since my camera doesn’t have a viewfinder, I find it much easier to shoot this way, relying solely on visualisation. After a bit of practice, one can estimate what’s going to be in the frame even when the camera isn’t at eye level. Of course there are many photos that don’t work out but that goes with the territory.

Street photography is a hard genre to master, what elements do you look for in a successful frame? A successful frame for me is one that elicits an emotional response, but I’m much more interested in how images can communicate with one another and be part of an eloquent whole, as Robert Frank deftly accomplished in his seminal book The Americans. As I’m photographing it’s a very visceral experience so the content of the image is usually latent and only fully realised as I’m editing and pairing images together.

For example, in the image Two Boys Embracing (see page 45) I find the juxtaposition of the embracing boys against the woman’s embraced hands fascinating as it seems to strengthen and underscore the solidarity that binds the community and individuals together. The boys seem to be joined through gesture and clothing – joined at the hip or conjoined – their matching clothes further highlighting their togetherness.

Are there any themes or social issues that you tr y to mirror in your street photography or are the subjects a product of a more organic approach? I’m ver y interested in the right to privacy issue as it relates to street photography and how that might affect the archive of imager y produced by future generations. From what I’ve learned, ever yone seems to be on edge these days about having their picture taken on the street, in places of business and at the airport where body scanners are being used to thwart potential misdeeds. We are ›

Kids on street corner

B+W Three boys running

all under sur veillance, all the time, and that brings up a larger dialogue about the right to privacy. With the ubiquity of smartphones, billions of street photographs are taken ever y day by people who disseminate these images across all media. If the law were to forbid the taking of street photographs we would lose our identity as a nation. Pictures act as historical documents, and without them we’d have no idea where we’ve been or where we are going. They are mementos of the human condition.

Imagine if a retroactive law were put in place to forbid the use of street photographs for any use, editorial or otherwise, without the permission of those depicted. What would that do to the rich photographic archive of street photography that currently resides in our museums, places we esteem and frequent to witness human achievement across all cultures? My photographic viewpoint is constrained to the streets and therefore, in a sense, I blend in because I frequent the same streets. Street photography is a kind of poetr y that can speak to our souls by embracing the humanity that we all share irrespective of our cultural differences and that’s what I’m interested in.

In your opinion, what’s more impor tant in street photography – solid technique or the people skills to prompt interaction with subjects? Since I photograph from the hip there’s absolutely no interaction with my subjects as these are candid photos. Therefore, technique would be more important to me.

Can you talk us through your kit bag – what cameras and lenses do you use on the street and what’s the item you would recommend? I think the Ricoh GR series is the best camera out there for street photography. It’s nimble, discreet and pocketable and it’s the only camera I use for street photography!

How much post-processing goes into your frames and can you share your work flow in this area? I only do simple burning and dodging in post-production, techniques one could do in a wet darkroom. Once these adjustments are made the images are sent off to my Epson SureColor P800 printer and printed on Epson’s Hot Press Bright paper.

What’s the best bit of photo advice you’ve been given and are willing to share, and what advice would you give to readers who have been inspired by your imager y and want to tr y something similar? Interesting photos can be made anywhere and everyone has a unique vision, so look no further than your immediate surroundings to find a story that has meaning for you.

What does the future look like for your street photography? Are there projects you’re looking to explore, or perhaps you are thinking of exhibiting or publishing? I haven’t made any street photographs since the South Williamsburg series. Lately I’ve been so engrossed in making a series of still life photographs for my children’s book, Inquisitive Creatures, with my partner Linda Montanez. The book is a story about four friends living in an abandoned workshop on a quest to solve one of science’s most difficult problems – time travel. As they set out to build a time machine, they discover that teamwork, persistence and above all friendship are the ingredients that make their dream come true. Sprinkled throughout the story are gentle references to some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Einstein, da Vinci, Newton, Tesla and Galileo. Most recently, images from this series were acquired by the Mulvane Art Museum and the Asheville Art Museum.

The pictures shown here are from the book South Williamsburg/Brooklyn by William Castellana Above Boys sitting on stairs Below Man talking on cell phone