Downtown Session II
Session Road, Baguio City 2009
And so I got the chance to fire a dose of the usual “beggar in the street” type of shot. It’s quite amazing that whenever we hear the term street photography, we tend to incorporate poverty as part of it. A theme that has long been utilized by the old masters and still is being utilized to date. It may probably have something to do with the country we grew up with as it may not be the case when someone blurts out something like, Europe street photography for example. While there may be a tiny spec of such theme thrown into the mix, it does not account for a large percentage of it. Not in our case. At least from what I’ve been seeing whenever I type the words “Philippine street photography” in the google search bar.
While such theme plays quite an important role in the world of photojournalism, I may have to agree that most of the time it is being overused and abused. Hence, losing all the more important elements of a powerful street photograph just for the sake of capturing a photo of say, an old fella with a tin can. The image above is a perfect example from none other than … yours truly. An image that has been a product of me falling into that same trap. And with the same frustration as the one that I had from day 1 kept pulling me down, I might as well just take the bait.
Having said that, these photos obviously speak nothing figurative. And please, this is not in any way another one of those “help save the world through photographs” type of thing. (a lot already made such great efforts on that and here we are still facing the same set of “images”.) but rather just a plain snap for the day while having “a walk in the park”. Plain enough to hang onto the house walls of that famous politician who just got his a$$-ets grilled on air … big time.
