Stranger to Stranger Continued

After doing my Stranger to Stranger series with digital photography, I decided to continue on this journey but by attacking it using 35 mm film and printing fiber prints in the darkroom.

Danny Santos II

“Every time I’m out in the streets, I would often encounter faces that make me look twice… faces that just stood out of the crowd without even trying… faces that are by no means ordinary. They range from the exquisitely beautiful to the strangely wonderful. Sometimes I would try to steal a shot without being too intrusive, most times I just stand there wishing I had the balls to just approach them and ask for their portrait. Thanks to my lucky stars … I eventually grew those balls to do so.” – Danny Santos II

After doing my series of stranger portraits I began to do some serious research on others who took the challenge of shooting strangers and have used a similar method. I came across Danny Santos II who shot portraits of strangers on the streets of Singapore. He used the method of approaching strangers and simply asking “Is it ok if I take your picture?”…His work is very strong and eye catching, and i like the similarities and the differences between our work, where I shot vertically but he chose the challenge of shooting portraits horizontally. Also how he was able to capture a range of genders and ages. Photographing strangers is indeed something i will definitely continue doing.

Stranger to Stranger

“Excuse me, can I take your picture?”

As a photographer I usually confine myself to shooting urban landscapes and degraded items, trying to find the beauty in all the rubble. I was in complete control positioning items and choosing locations that I found interesting and not having to worry about any encounters or rejections from these items. Aiming to give these locations and things character I realized I was running away from the most natural character found in only people. I have come to admire portraits because they have the ability to express someone as either who they really are or how they want to be seen, but I found myself scared to enter their space, realizing that through one image I would be able to capture and reveal so much more of someone than just their facial identity. For that reason I usually run from portrait photography, knowing that I could capture this one glance and keep it forever. But I decided to stop running, and challenge myself and place myself in situations that some find daring. Over the course of a few months, I have walked numerous streets while approaching numerous strangers unsure of the reaction I would receive, being that I was placing myself in a situation that would most likely be rejected. Each time I approached an individual I wondered what reaction I would receive based on my appearance, my proposal, and our initial encounter; wanting to photograph these individuals in order to display their natural character based on this meeting, and therefore revealing the strength of their natural expressions, and showing these similarities and varieties in multiple cultures. These encounters have led to numerous reactions from where I was cursed out, laughed at, and rejected: the main reasons why I feared shooting portraits. However I have realized that the biggest rejection that had the strongest effect was me rejecting myself from these opportunities. I wanted to portray the outlook of one stranger to another, the stranger being photographed and the viewer, shown through my perspective where there was a discomfort between the photographer and person being photographed. Some say one’s eyes are what give them away, but through this process I have realized that the eyes are just the leading doorway to the overall composition of ones face; where each structure, wrinkle, scar, facial lines, displays life.