Unit 1 Task 1 Street Photographers Research
George Georgiou
- creator of London 'micro-dramas'.
The essence of Last Stop Project is that you might take the same route every day but what you see, the ebb and flow on the street takes on a random nature, like a series of fleeting mini soap operas.
The way some people live on London street.
Is it a 'service area' or is your dirty mind playing tricks on you?
I feel like I went back to 90s when kids have no mobile phones and would have to queue to phone boxes. Are they pranking people or calling a drug dealer?
Last Stop was entirely crowd-funded, it is a remarkable photographic assessment of London, taken from the perspective of the city’s iconic buses.
"In 2008, I decided to take a few random bus rides to see what London was like. It took me 5 years. Suddenly I just thought London was a completely different story for me because this is my city. Using bus windows I become invisible and documented people on the streets and tried to understand the public space."
Arriving in London from the south coast (Folkestone), Georgiou would board the first bus that sparked his curiosity. George Georgiou would spend up to 12 hours a day riding bus routes’ entire length. Taking whichever seat was free, he would stare into the right-angle viewfinder of his camera resting on his lap so that his subjects were oblivious to the lens trained on them.
“London had quite suddenly become the most international place on earth,” Georgiou says. “It had opened up to people who have no heritage or connection in London, apart from their wanting to make this their home. Seeing so many people living together, and, mostly, making it work – I found it very powerful."
Last Stop is not purely about people. When Georgiou settled on the upper level of a bus, he allowed himself a broader view, situating the micro-dramas in their architectural context. This triangulation between street portraiture, architectural studies and the landscape is a key aspect of Last Stop.
Saul Leiter - Master of colour
It was a difficult challenge to only choose 4 pictures of this photographer.
While he worked with a variety of lenses, Leiter was well known for often using a telephoto perspective and particularly a 150mm lens. This is not a focal length that many street photographers use, but he used it to create a compressed view that made his work feel painterly.
Leiter used many other strategies to enhance the painterly look and feel, including shooting in the rain and snow, photographing through windows, including reflections, and combining many elements at different depths, often bringing out strong colours in out-of-focus foreground elements. Leiter even purchased expired colour film, which would allow for surprise colour shifts.
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