Photographing Streets...Literally
Since 1980-1981, my point-and-shoot format has been 120/220 or better known as medium format. I've always been attracted to the square format as opposed to rectilinear, and 120/220 film size is substantially larger than 35mm so that prints from 120/220 offer better definition, and they have a quality unlike 35mm. The last 35mm film I exposed was 1992: before that, however, I made a lot of 35mm black & white negatives. With the exception of Polaroid SX-70, 35mm color slides where the only color photographic medium available to me. And what do you do with slides? Having said that, I've been burrowing into my 35mm black & white negative archive. I'm not sure what still works and what doesn't. These two were indicative of what I was doing in the late 1970's. I was purposely blurring images, shooting with Diana Cameras, and learning how to print negatives that often were grossly over-exposed. Both of these were exposed in Paris in the winter of 1977. I remember I was looking down a lot, and taking pictures of what was under foot.
Parisian Winter Cityscape
For you with little or no experience with Paris in the winter time, understand how far north it is compared to, say, New York City. It gets dark real early in December and January. Also, it's gray and rainy a lot. I use to spend a lot of time in Paris back in the day. Some of the images that I made there still stand the test of time for me. Back them, my only color options were 35mm negatives or transparencies. Although I was making medium format black & white negatives, I never used 2 1/4 color film. It didn't have a darkroom where I could make C prints, and for me at the time, having color labs make color prints for me was beyond my financial reach. In the past several years, I've gone through all my 35mm transparencies, and I've scanned a bunch of them. It's also a little strange because as I've mentioned in other posts, the square frame of 2 1/4 has always been my first choice, followed by 4x5 or 8x10 rectangles. Having started to use a fx Nikon DSLR, I'm back to the 35mm rectangle.
This was the skyline from my bedroom in Paris during one winter that I spent there. I remember, I made a lot of skyline images, but I've always really like this one, probably because of the way the curtains filter the image. And there something about seeing the weak, insipid winter sunlight in this image that jolts memories of that time, and how I started to make better photographs.
