|
May 15, 2011
Alex Webb is classified alternately as a street photographer, photojournalist, and fine art photographer, who runs an interesting blog with his wife Rebecca Norris Webb. They are photographic team who often work together on books and exhibitions and curation.
Alex Webb often uses an off-center, often oblique, frame divider and he understands colour in terms of atmosphere and emotion and the feel of a place.
Alex Webb, Sultanahmet, Istanbul, from Instanbul: City of A Hundred Names", 1998
Webb is well known for complex compositions with many moving figures momentarily arranged in a perfect way.
He says:
I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner.
He says that he works in color, where light is really important in a very special way, so he work certain hours much more than others. He is always out at the latter half of the afternoon and in the evening. " It is a whole sort of ritualistic process and a part of it is also that notion that if it is not working I just have to walk more."
He adds:
It is really about walking and feeling the situation. How do you enter the situation. Some situations you get comfortable just walking right in. Others you have to sort of dance around the edge and come in here. The whole sense of the process, a rhythm of the process. The process of going back to a place. The process of learning about a place.
|
