Welcome to episode 4 of creative conversations.
http://creativedialog.wordpress.com/
This week I visit Weymouth seafront, where I meet local photographer Paul Russell. He talks about the difference between a documentary photographer and a street photographer. A definition of street photography is; “the ability to see the unusual in the everyday and to capture the moment.”
Paul mentions a couple of his themes and how they need to be broad enough to allow him to take a range of photos, but tight to hold the pictures together. His Country Show theme was featured on the BBC website and had over 220,000 hits. We hear about how the internet helps him reach a global audience and about the strength of having a good website. How over promotion can be counter-productive and though he uses social networking sites like flickr he does not link to these from his website.
Paul is a member of in-public, which is made up of twenty photographers and whose aim is to promote Street Photography and to continue to explore its possibilities.His membership of the group has helped him gain exposure and to being invited into contributing work for exhibitions.
We hear about the ranges of exhibitions he has been in lately and about his work being included in the “‘must-have book for anyone remotely interested in the genre” Thames and Hudson book “Street Photography Now“. This book presents 46 contemporary image-makers noted for their candid depictions of everyday life in our streets.
We hear how even though successful his photography does not really earn him any where near a decent wage. And how it has become more and more difficult for documentary photographers to make a living. The opportunities to earn money from his art is fairly limited and the traditional source of commissions from magazines has disappeared in the last few years.
We then end up and briefly talk about the “smarting up” of Weymouth seafront, and about the Olympic legacy and how he feels that a small gallery can drastically change the nature of small seaside towns. That though transient events are good the investment in a permanent gallery space would create a creative focus to the town and be a meeting point for artists in the area. He thinks that the seafront has improved recently with the new style huts, that the general toning down of the beach huts make it look nicer.
