Month: January 2009

photograph©Bryan Formhals

In one week I’ll be on the Amtrak headed to New York.  The train ride is about 32 hours and stops in Chicago and DC before arriving in New York.  As I’ve been telling people, this is probably the worst time in 80 years to be looking for work in New York.  It’s very conceivable this could be nothing more than a three week vacation.  I hope not, but it’s gonna be a hustle.

When I first decided to move to Los Angeles, most of my friends were rather shocked.  They always figured if I went anywhere it’d be New York.  Other than the weather, the real appeal of Los Angeles for me was the creative energy of the city.  No matter what you say about LA, it’s a place to puts a high value on creativity and the imagination.  I arrived in Los Angeles wanting to be a writer and left wanting to pursue photography and the visual arts.

I’ve had plenty of time to think recently and I’m starting to realize that there’s probably a place for writing in my creative life.  It’s something I enjoy and writing on the web is a bit less stressful than writing for a magazine or newspaper or what have you.  I have some ideas and plan to use this space to write more about creativity, the web and photography.  I’ve thought about adding more commentary to the LPV blog but I’d really like to keep that focused on viewing photography and not fueling conversation.

So, why New York? Why now?  Well, to keep it simple, I have a New York itch I want to scratch.  I’m also looking forward to photographing there.  Most of my friends will quip, ‘why would you want to photograph in New York?’  True, it’s one of the most photographed cities on the planet, but I find that challenging.  What I’m particularly attracted to is the ability to get around to different neighborhoods rather quickly.  The subway culture is something I find interesting.  The ability to hope around and be in different places quickly will be a nice change from Los Angeles, where it’s impossible to get around.

At the end of my time shooting in Los Angeles, I started to feel that I’d evolved into a flaneur photographer.

The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means “to stroll”. Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”.

Walking around Los Angeles I really never had a defined purpose.  I was working on a project but it was a project about experiencing the visual elements of the city….the light, color, ugliness, the flow.  The project was never really about anything deeper and I was ok with that.  It seemed fitting for Los Angeles and in particular, my relationship to it photographically.  I was more or less a long term tourist transfixed by the light falling on the city.

I’ll arrive in New York as a flaneur photographer.  What that means exactly, I don’t know.  That’s why I want to be there.  I know it’ll be different than LA.  How can I adapt?  What ideas will crystallize? New York seems like the perfect place to test out some of my ideas.  I won’t be alone.  There are plenty of photographers there already riffing on this type work, and thank god.  I haven’t read Sontag but I know she’s written about the flaneur and photography.  And I suppose I’m just being pretentious and trying to avoid using the dreaded ’street photographer’ label, but I think there’s something different between the flaneur and the documentary or street photographer.  Certainly a debate that will drive some people into hysterics.

I moved to Los Angeles because I wanted to see the place for myself.  And now I’ll head to New York for the same reasons.  What’s different about this move however is that I have a network in place.  I know a few people, and that will certainly make it more interesting…