It’s funny, I’ve never really considered myself as a street shooter. Some of big names of that genre that immediately come to mind are Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus. Of the four I mentioned, the last one, Arbus, used a medium format Rollieflex, the others used 35mm Leicas. The image below was taken in New York in the 90’s with a an old Rollie which had belonged to my grandfather, and that I nickname affectionately after him, Ralph. I took a lot of photographs with Ralph. It was a fixed focal length lens (80mm) camera. In the 70’s, when I changed formats from 35mm to 2 1/4, I rarely went back to rectilinear framing. The square format of 2 1/4 just felt so natural and right for me. I used Ralph as my point and shoot camera for along time, finally retiring it for a Hasselblad in 1994.
These guys were part of the Polish Day parade in Manhattan, and the patch one guy’s sleeve says Bound Brook, which, as we all know, is in northern New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge. I’ve always loved this image, the way these two guys look, the drum thingie sticking out the one guy’s belt. I can imagine these two having been friends and part of a marching band for years.
