People Watching
How does someone overcome a lack of the self-confidence that is needed for immersive street photography but satisfy a yearning to photograph the most interesting of subjects - people? I have always been in awe of those who can put a lens in front of a complete stranger and capture a decisive moment. I can’t help but feel my awkwardness in looking at these images. Some feel a little too much as if they are seeing strangers as a source of amusement, poking fun or even denigrating their subjects, regardless of their actual intentions and motivations. Others do let the viewer into a moment in time that can build some connection with the subject. In some cases these are complete strangers. Vivian Meier’s work is perhaps an example of this, in which her own persona and role enabled her to enter the private space of others. Tish Murtha and Chris Killip would gain the confidence of their subjects, that they were or became trusted insiders, free to capture honest images without prejudice.
Tish Murtha - Promo for “Vandalism on a Grand Scale”. British Culture Archive. 2026
In the end aren’t all images about people? Whether it is our impact on nature, the search for rare landscapes (as yet) untouched by us, or the environment we create around us we find ourselves at the centre of almost any image. Following a trip to Iceland I was awestruck by watching the 2012 documentary film “Chasing Ice” covering the work of National Geographic photographer James Balog. What I had been photographing in Iceland had not just been calving glaciers, but the effects of their melting induced my man-made climate change. On the other hand I had also been photographing the immense power of nature in lava flows, in which nature had, for once, the upper hand as people tried to mitigate volcanic risks to life and property - with mixed success. A similar sense emerged from Martin Parr’s autobiographical final show “Global Warning” (2026). Looking back over his work Parr recognised that his life’s work had been documenting people, their consumption activities and ultimately our relationship with our environment.
This awareness that images can convey a sense of people and their complexities without always conforming to the genre rules of portraiture or street photography is important to me. The story is still there even without centring the person. Nonetheless, the uniqueness of each of us as individuals is still a source of fascination and wonderful to capture when the confidence, the trust, or the opportunity exists. The image of Siouxsie Sioux (above) vocalist with Siouxsie and the Banshees taken at the height of the band’s success at the start of the 1980s was possible only through the confidence of a 17-year old with an SLR camera. Such moments have probably become harder now that cameras are a constant intrusion into the lives of anyone in the spotlight.
In a nice touch, the singer-songwriting Sam Fender chose images from Tish Murtha’s archive for his 2025 album “People watching”.
