jeff tessier photography

Art Crawl street portraits - April 2010

In case you haven't seen them on Facebook, I do street portraits during the James North Art Crawl each month.  The idea came from my desire to revisit the now antiquated idea of a street studio, a concept that dates from the era before the personal camera was invented, when people could only be photographed by a professional.  A street studio was a mobile space at which a photographer would invite/cajole passers-by into a sitting, making a little money for himself and giving the subject a chance to take part in something usually unavailable to people of modest means.  Today's equivalent works largely the same way, except that the money is taken out of the equation and you need to do more than show you've got a camera to get people to stop for a sitting.

I started doing mine at the SuperCrawl last October, just after I'd moved into my studio above Mixed Media at James & Cannon, and I've been out there each month since.  My street portraits are pretty rough - mainly headshots, noisy, lit with either a ring flash or flash bounced off a white card taped to the side of a building.  These are not the most exciting portraits, street or otherwise, but the project has become meaningful for me anyway.  It's something I'm committed to doing each month because, first, I get to use my camera for a few hours and, second,  I want to contribute to the total Art Crawl effect though I don't own a gallery or store on the street, just like Gord Simmons who sings opera on the sidewalk and Drama Bot who dresses like a robot and acts out scenes from plays.  Also, it's a way for me to learn not only about lighting and shooting people, but about talking to them as well, something I and many photographers too often avoid doing .

You can check out the April images on the Facebook page here.

To the right, Peter Michael Wilson, a great Hamilton photographer.

Oh, and the guy who's at the vanguard of the street studio revival is Clay Enos.  See his stuff here.  I don't do 'em the way he does 'em.