NYC Street Photography

When you're walking around looking for photographs, part of your brain is constantly scanning. You're looking at people, light, backgrounds, gestures, someone coming around a corner. Maybe you aren't taking in the city in the same way as somebody walking around without a camera.

I notice much more when I have a camera.

Faces, hands, the way two people stand next to each other, somebody looking in a strange direction, a reflection, smoke coming out of the street, little interactions that last for a second and then disappear.

So maybe you lose one kind of awareness and gain another.

New York is obviously a ridiculous place for this because there is so much happening at once. The subway alone is full of photographs. People waiting, sleeping, staring into nowhere and doing everything possible not to make eye contact with each other.

It's what I saw.

When I look at these photographs now, I see somebody who was daring.

Not brave in some heroic way. More that I hadn't yet learned all the reasons not to take a photograph.

But experience also makes you very good at explaining why a photograph won't work.

When I shot these photographs, I didn't have as many of those filters.

Something looked interesting, so I took the picture.

I see raw instinct.

A lot of what later became my approach to candid photography is already somewhere in these pictures. Getting close, reacting quickly and being more interested in people than in making everything perfect.

Sometimes not knowing enough is useful.

You don't know enough yet to ruin the idea.

When photography becomes your job

There was also pressure on this trip.

Photography was becoming my work, and that changes something.

Once photography becomes your job, it's difficult to completely switch off the part of your brain that expects a result.

You go to New York with a camera and suddenly you think you should come home with something good.

And New York adds another layer because the city has such an enormous photographic history.

The pressure to make something can easily get in the way of actually seeing something.

The Ricoh GR II

Every photograph on this page was made with the Ricoh GR II.

I've written much more about cameras in my street photography camera guide, but I still have a ridiculous amount of affection for the GR II.

I think it might be one of the best cameras ever made.

It's small.

Small enough that you don't have an excuse not to bring it.

That matters far more than people give it credit for.

The Ricoh was different.

You put it in your pocket.

And because you don't have to decide whether to take the camera, you end up having a camera when something happens.

That is a pretty useful feature for street photography.

Street photography at 28 mm

The Ricoh GR II has a 28 mm equivalent lens.

These days I mostly shoot around a 50 mm equivalent with my Fujinon 35mm f/1.4, so looking back through these New York photographs feels surprisingly wide.

And I kind of miss it.

I actually think 28 mm requires more skill to use well.

With a longer lens, simplifying a photograph is easier. You see an interesting person, isolate them and remove much of the mess around them.

At 28 mm, everything gets invited into the picture.

You also have to get close.

If you want somebody to fill a meaningful part of the frame at 28 mm, standing ten metres away isn't going to do much.

If you're photographing candidly, that can feel uncomfortable. If you're talking to somebody, it makes the portrait more intimate because you're physically close to them.

The wide lens doesn't let you hide.

Looking through these NYC photographs makes me want to go wider again.

I just think it asks something different from you.

Black and white street photography in New York

Everything here was photographed in black and white.

I've always been attracted to black and white photography, and obviously New York has an almost unfair amount of photographic history attached to black and white.

New York has so much information already. Signs, clothes, advertisements, traffic, reflections, shop windows, lights and people everywhere.

Removing colour gets rid of one layer.

Faces become more important. Gestures become more important. Light becomes more important.

That's one of the things I still like most about photography. It gives completely insignificant encounters a very long life.

The woman on the subway

There is one woman I still remember very clearly.

I met her on the subway. She was African American and had this enormous hair. She looked incredible.

More importantly, she was kind.

There are pictures where you remember making the photograph.

And then there are pictures where seeing them brings the person back.

This one does that.

Then seven years pass and suddenly those details tell you exactly when the photograph belongs.

Main characters

One thing about photographing New York actually bothered me a little.

A lot of people looked too photographable.

Especially around some of the obvious commercial areas, people looked like they had already been cast to play a person in New York.

Everyone was the main character.

But after a while I found it less interesting.

It started to feel a little like a play.

You weren't discovering the character. The character had already arrived fully dressed.

And increasingly, I think I'm more interested in people who aren't trying to look interesting.

What changed in Mexico City

That became much clearer through my street photography in Mexico City.

Mexico City is really where I developed as a photographer.

I spent far more time there, so of course the relationship with the city became completely different.

Workers. Vendors. People carrying things. People repairing something. People cooking in the street. People whose working day actually happens in public.

They use the street.

They don't just move through it.

A blue-collar worker who is physically building or maintaining part of the city is often more interesting to me than someone who happens to be wearing perfect clothes.

That became a big part of how I started thinking about documentary photography.

A reason to return

If I went back to New York now, I don't think the biggest difference would be my camera.

I'd have a reason.

When I made these photographs, New York itself was enough.

Today that's probably too broad for me.

I'd want to find something inside New York that I actually cared about and spend time on it.

Something that made me return to the same place the next day instead of constantly moving on looking for another good photograph.

I used to be much more interested in collecting individual photographs.

Now I'm interested in what happens when the photographs start talking to each other.

Ten good photographs aren't automatically a project.

There has to be something between them.

If I returned to New York today, I wouldn't only want photographs of New York.

I'd want a reason to photograph New York.

What I want back

The funny thing is that I would go back with more intention, but I would also like to photograph with less thought.

That's the contradiction I see when I look at these old pictures.

Today I know more, but I also know how to hesitate.

Seven years ago I was more likely to just try.

Part of me wants to steal something back from the photographer I was then.

The closeness.

The wider lens.

The willingness to take a picture without completely understanding why.

You just need to pay attention.

These New York photographs are some of my earliest work, which is exactly why I wanted them in my photography portfolio.

They're not here because every frame is technically perfect.

They're here because I recognise myself in them.

A lot of what I photograph now was already hiding somewhere in these pictures.

I want some of that back.

Maybe getting better isn't only about learning more.

At some point you also have to decide which things you've learned that you can safely forget.

Photography commissions in New York

Street photography still has a big influence on my commissioned work.

It's about bringing some of the way I observe when I'm alone on the street into a bigger production.

That way of working has carried into larger campaigns including my Burger King photography and Coca-Cola work

I'm based in Copenhagen and work internationally.

If you're planning an editorial, commercial or documentary project in New York, I'd be glad to hear about it.

I would like to photograph New York again.

Not because I want to recreate these pictures.

I don't.

And I'm definitely not interested in trying to photograph the version of New York I remember from seven years ago.

I'd rather see what catches my attention now.

I would probably arrive with more of an idea. Find something worth spending time on and see how far I could take it.

But I'd also bring a wider lens.

Get closer.

Take more chances.

And try not to think quite so much.

These photographs came from three days in New York with a Ricoh GR II and no real plan.

Seven years later, maybe what I like most about them is that I didn't know enough yet to talk myself out of taking them.