Street Archive - Page 13 of 17 - STRKNG Photography Blog

Let me introduce myself. While many of the street photographers here know me, I figure maybe I should let others in on who I am.

My name is Alex Coghe. I am Italian, born in Rome but I moved definitely in Mexico City in 2010.

I shoot Mexico City since 12 years ago so this means that I know enough this city. As a professional photographer I do photojournalism and portraits, specializing in books for models. I worked also for Leica Camera Ag on assignment and for Burberry. That was my debut in fashion photography.

I have been providing street photography workshops for quite a few years now.

My workshops are real experiences and usually I work with small groups or private one to one for all levels. My workshops in Mexico City are a success with students coming from any part of the world. Recently I added Oaxaca as city available for my masterclass street photography workshop. I propose also photographic expeditions in Oaxaca, for example in October&November during Day of the Dead celebrations.

For STRKNG I decided to focus on street photography but I reserve in future to show part of my work with models.

On my website alexcoghe.com you will find a lot of resources and I am publishing a small guide to street photography.

About Street Photography I can say that is part of me every single day. It doesn’t matter if I’m in my barrio or in downtown: every time I go out I have to do it with a camera, digital or film.

I ask my students what their motivations are. Because I believe that they have to be strong if you want to be a street photographer. There is a difference between being and doing it. I don’t want to go into too much depth here on the ontology of being street photographers but let me tell you that for me it’s about being willing to bleed. I mean not literally but willing to really pour ourselves into the work we are going to do.

When I am on the street I certainly do not hide what I am doing, or photographing. I am in an open and positive attitude, I smile because I love what I do and in all these years I must say that even shooting in places considered difficult if not dangerous I have never had excessive problems.

I photographed also with flash, it happens often to get very close to people, using lenses between 28mm and 35mm. The goal for me is a photograph showing gestures and that special humanity that you can find in a shot.

What I do is to interpret what has always been my curiosity towards other people. I do it and I did it as a writer and I don’t turn it off when I have the camera with me.

About making photos with a theme in street photography

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-30

To photograph on the street is most of the time we can find. And usually photos arrive to us. There are so many variables and it depends on the day, but this doesn’t mean we can’t make projects.

A unique theme for a street photographer is an important challenge and a way to learn to start thinking for projects that will take you to the next level.

Photographers like Garry Winogrand showed us how to make photos with a theme can bring you to realize books. Think about his work about business men, or about the women, or the zoo. Joel Meyerowitz in 1983 published his book Wildflowers, because by looking his archive he discovered there were a lot of pictures including flowers. So he back on the street to make other photos to add for the book.

To my students I recommend them to start thinking about themes. Maybe also by looking to their archive. The work with the photos already made is important because you can discover a lot of you as a photographer, your attitude and your interests. It is an important experience with yourself and with your photos, always with the focus to let your inner voice emerge.

As an example I show here some photos I made some years ago about men shoes.

EDOMEX, Street Photography and approach

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-25

To photograph in EDOMEX (state of Mexico) is a total different experience. In fact you can’t think to go and simply start to make photos. You need to prepare yourself. It is not like photographing in downtown. The State of Mexico faces a critical situation of citizen security, being one of the most violent states in the country and the one with the most crimes per 100 inhabitants, with 93 (when national average is 41).

To try to make street photography is "cosa de loco" and despite not any place in EDOMEX are unsafe or criminal areas you have always to consider where you are.

The fact is that I live in the north side of Mexico City. And just on the border with EDOMEX. I am used to trespass. Next week I found myself in the state of Mexico for a book fair and, as always, I was with my camera (I always carry one) and I started to make some photos. You can see a selection here.

What I do on the street

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-20

I would define myself a concerned street photographer.

I consider myself belonging to old school street photography, the one that still considers it important that the photograph taken on the street is a document of the era and of society and not a form of showing my photographic eye. To visual games and optical effects I prefer gestures, expressions, how the human being fills the public space, the interaction with the urban context.

The new breed of street photographers is focused often on the wow effect: this is because today with instagram and the social networks the attention is only 3 seconds as maximum.

I prefer to focus the attention on things that will have value to see in 20 or 50 years.

Black and White film mood

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-17

This week I was in downtown and I decided to back to photograph something in black and white. Despite I consider now color is my main voice when it comes to street photography, I was looking to document street life in Mexico City, in a old school way and this is exactly where my instinct took me.

I like the pictures presented here because in my opinion I achieved o give them a film mood.

A rough place

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-15

I am not new in photographing rough places. Indeed I live in a barrio of the north side of Mexico City, a popular barrio. And in all these years I have photographed in Tepito, Cuautepec, Itzapalapa, and I photographed also in EDOMEX, the state of Mexico in several parts, in particular in Naucalpan.

Despite my appearance as a foreigner recommends not going to take pictures in certain places, I do. Motivation is stronger than the fear of encountering problems. These are places that not even the Mexicans think for photography.

Yesterday I went to Plaza Meave. In the end it is a small area, between 2 streets; Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas and Republica de San Salvador. My wife advised me not to find myself there. There is a commercial plaza where they specialize in selling cell phones and other electronic equipment. The market is not completely crystal clear. There are also stories that come at you and simulate that you dropped your cell phone and then extorted money to repair it.

Yesterday I was there: i was not intentional. I just found myself…there. I can assure you that the vibe was completely different, even from Tepito. While in Tepito I photographed without any problem, here I could see how someone was looking at me and my camera. Despite this I decided to take 4 photographs that you see here.

It was just me and my camera. I could not know what the reaction could be. A man in particular observed me in a very bad way. I have been careful. More alert than usual.

The photos are not that good. But it shows a documentation of what I have been able to take at home from that place: Plaze Meave.

"Motion"

Street

Photographer Streetmax212021-07-10

I’m delighted to have been selected for the themed group exhibition "Motion", to be held at PH21 Gallery, Budapest, August 26 – September 18, 2021.

Image link here:

https://www.ph21gallery.com/motion-21?lightbox=dataItem-kqwavhfn4

Exhibition link here:

https://www.ph21gallery.com/motion-21

Back to Life – Pandemic City (Part 2)

Street

Photographer Deborah Swain2021-07-10

When I first started photographing the streets of Rome during the pandemic for my 20/20 vision project, my primary interest was to record people, and the behavioural differences being played out on the streets in these strange times of social distancing and lockdown.

I live very close to the Vatican City, an area full of businesses that depend on tourism for their very survival. It’s a busy area which is usually thronging with crowds. Now there are many shuttered shop fronts, and permanently closed restaurants. Tourism is still predominately domestic at time of writing, but very recently, as restrictions slowly lift, there are suddenly more people on the streets. The atmosphere is charged again with an albeit faint buzz of human activity and renewed energy. I hope these recent photographs convey this.

About my Gonzography and some shots made in Ostia, Rome

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-09

Many people feel comfortable with the order and the beauty.

This influences their vision and prefers it when they observe. I can feel this sense of order in open contrast with the unpredictability, tension and chaos in the world. My work is an examination of the different forms of how the human animal adapts and shows its different faces in the world.

Without filters. Raw. Straight. 

I enjoy to photograph moments where you can feel there is a particular kind of tension. It doesn’t really matter if I am on a street or in a little room. I am influenced both the relative quiet that the mathematics of chaos.

Essentially, I want to celebrate the human. I want to show the deep and indissoluble dichotomy between the eccentric and the ordinary. Photography and writing are always an interpretation of reality. In my photography there is a lot of emphasis on interpretation, because I always believed in this continuous relationship between the external reality and what is my feeling when I work both as a photographer and as a writer.

The space for interpretation is always present when I make a photograph. For this reason I think any photograph is a document of what happened in front of my eyes but also a witness of what it was my mindset at the moment to press the shutter button. A photograph is a revealing action, of the situation represented and also portrait of myself.  

I borrowed the Hunter S. Thompson concept of Gonzo Journalism, and I speak of Gonzo Photography. I immerse myself in the situation, I enter it really, I put myself at stake, I take my own risks.

The photos you can see here are a reflection of my approach. I realized these photos in Ostia, I would say a barrio in Ostia, that is not completely safe to photograph there but I did it. Because I am a photographer working in Mexico in popular neighborhoods everyday.

I can remember how someone said me that I could’t reply the same approach in Italy…as if photographing in Mexico was easier …

In these images there is interaction and there is not. I don’t use just an approach and anything depends by the situation. To the end of the game to me is just about photographing life. Just like it is.

I hope you enjoy.

Reality Remade (2011)

Street

Photographer Alex Coghe2021-07-07

I realized this project in 2011, through a reflection about my mindset of a new arrived in Mexico City. I should create ghosts so I used a flash unit to achieve it. After the publication of that mini project I started to ser a lot of street photographers replying my technique.

Reality Remade is a reaction of my condition in that moment. I was arrived in Mexico City a year before and after that I still felt myself as a total stranger in town. In October 2011 I worked 3 weeks in Los Angeles where I met a lot of talented photographers and that experience was fundamental to me.

I returned from the United States with a lot of energy and a new spirit, above all full of ideas that I wanted to implement. I bought a Yongnuo 560 flash and despite I loved the use of flash on the street watched in the work of Bruce Golden my intention was just to have an experience with the flash for my street shots. I absolutely had to avoid imitating him. 1/30, 1/60, sometimes even 1/15 and the use of flash. It is a technique that has something random on the results and I was just experimenting while I was working. Experimenting just like still happens to me because I never want to stay in my comfort zone. This is how I learned a lot with photography.

Madero Avenue is a street very busy, which leads you to the Zocalo, the most important square in the center of Mexico City. I watched all these people pass in front of me and then disappear. People I didn’t know and who I probably wouldn’t see again in my life. It was like the life and death. You appear at a certain point and then disappear, just like everyone of us. I understood how that idea could be a theme of a project and the flash unit could be a fantastic tool to realize it: by creating ghosts on the street I could give to the viewer the sensation of ghosts, as existences of the past that appeared, spirits who still inhabited the city, continuing to animate it in their wanderings.

It was a project different from what you expect when it comes to Street Photography. It was my project. I was photographing the reality but playing with it, in order to propose a reflection that was completely personal, born from an inner feeling. It also does not happen or at least I had never seen it applied to street photography to tell about a theme that does not speak only of life but also of death.

You can read also some backstage considerations about the project on my blog:

https://alexcoghe.com/journal/reality-remade-story-of-a-street-photography-project

Category: Street

Street Photography ES

About making photos with a theme in street photography

EDOMEX, Street Photography and approach

What I do on the street

Black and White film mood

A rough place

"Motion"

Back to Life – Pandemic City (Part 2)

About my Gonzography and some shots made in Ostia, Rome

Reality Remade (2011)