Drive-By Shootings

Street photography of a New York taxi-driver at it's most raw and

unfiltered core :

<a href="http://www.urban-

resources.net/pages/drive_by_shootings.html">drive-by shootings</a>,

here are

some <a

href="http://home.eduhi.at/user/tw/taxi/taxi.htm">photographs</a>

from the book

I have the book and there are strong pictures in it, snapshot's almost (driving in a car while taking photographs), though snapshots where sometimes everything comes together as if everything in it was carefully planned.I like his style, he has a great streetphotographers eye...

I don't understand the appeal of this sort of disconnected and themeless photography. While all photographic styles have some merit, this stuff eludes me.

 

I feel the same about the street photographer's stuff that features people caught in mid-motion doing ordinary things or staring off into space in some urban setting.

 

Hey, it's art and one man's art is another man's reason to scratch his head.

More on David Bradford:

 

http://www.takegreatpictures.com/articles/default.asp?aid=111

 

Themeless? It was all done from the perspective of a taxi driver. Sounds like a theme to me.

I picked up the book when it came out for $20 at B&N -- they had piles of them and it

seemed no one was buying. Now those books appear to have been pulped or remainedered,

it's going for a sometimes ridiculous premium. <p>

 

The book is impressive in that it crams thousands (?) of photos in it, and the cumulative

effect is greaster than any single photo in the book. But most of the images are so tiny....

<p>

 

Bradford started out shooting with a Yahica T-4, which was an insane thing to do, since

autofocusing past the winshield requires pressing a tiny button 4 times <u>each time</u>

you shoot, since the camera doesn't retain the infinity setting between shots. After using

the T-4 for a while, he picked up a used Leica, which most of the shots in the book are

made with. <p>

 

I rode in Bradford's cab once. He keeps a copy of his book next to him up front and shows

it to people. I'm sure that it helps break the ice if he wants to photograph his rides. At least

it probably got him above-average tips.

 

I was reminded a little of Bradford the other day when I came across these photos by John

Divola: <p>

 

<u><A href = http://snipurl.com/61dx>http://snipurl.com/61dx</a></u>

The portraits of his fares in the back seat of his taxi are more interesting than the example shots shown in the link.

Okay, I did a drive-by search on Google and came up with a couple of

things.

 

There is an article by Gerhard Waldherr that was apparently first

published in Der Spiegel at <http://www.unarte.de/david.htm>. The

bottom running head, from page 10, reads Kultur Spiegel 12/1998.

This article, in German, talks about Existentialism and quotes

Bradford as saying that his taxi is his prison. Unfortunately, the

article does not show his best photography.

 

There is an interview with David Bradford by Mark Williams on Take

Great Pictures.com. The selection of Bradford's shots are more

extensisve (slide show of 15) and better.

 

There are some photographers one takes to immediately and some that

one needs time to appriciate. Bradford belongs to the latter

catagory in my case. He obviously shoots with one hand on the wheel

and the other on the camera. There is a rough off-centerness to even

his best shots. (I sense he doesn't crop, but I might be wrong.) It

is irritating at first but when you get used to it his work becomes a

lot of fun. The best shots are of people--that has to be. The worst

are of scenery. The seeming blandness, the Zone System-in-the-

dumpster style, works beautifully when people are involved. With

landscapes it works sometimes--and wonderfully-- but too often

produces mere repetitions of countless tourist shots.

 

The above are first impresses and a second and third look may change

my mind.

 

I'd like to get a hold of his book. I sense that more careful

editing might have been in order, but I'll reserve judgement until I

have it in my hands.

You should get a hold of the book,'cause it's great in being stuffed with photographs that are so (un)complex and unpretentious, they say nothing and everything all at once, they speak and breath about New York, about the big city life.

Don't think it has to be edited further,ok not all photographs in it are that strong that they can completely stand on their own, but I think it was intentionaly meant to be so; to not only include the stronger and better ones, but also the more mundane, in order to let the viewer realy search for the ones that shine a little bit more,almost like the photographer going for the hunt.

It's fun to put your mindseye into the book and look at those many (and at first sight simple snapshots) pictures where all those visual things are happening in such a way that you can almost feel the movement of the car and everything.

And also some other thing: I think it speaks of pure genius to come up with the idea of shooting pictures of New York when he's driving his taxi, when he's just doing his job, and lifting it up to something more meaningfull,and then also doing it,and coming to the point that his pictures are actually publisched in a bookform worldwide.it's so simple and therein lies the beauty of it...

When I first looked into the book I just smiled and thougth of how simple it all can be, to just beïng there and looking and pressing that damn camera as a simple evidence of life, of the way things are,almost without thinking, instead of putting to much concept in it.

It reminds me of the film Smoke, where there is a man who goes out everyday with his camera and tripod, everyday at the same hour, taking pictures from the exact same vantagepoint on a streetcorner, every single day of his life.So he ends up with thousands of pictures of the same scene, but if you really look close, they are all different.Drive-By Shootings has that same no nonsense feeling to it,in that you don't even have to logically understand it.

I saw this when it first came out, and although I haven't looked at it recently, the comments above remind me of my assesment at the time. There are real gems in that mass of photos, and I think the book would be much more powerful if it were assiduously edited. Of course, I should follow my own advice on my web site....

 

Maybe some day I will - I think one can make a much better impression with, say, the best 50 photos from a collection of 500, than with the full 500. Every average photo seems to detract a little from the great ones.

I got the book around a year ago, and was imnpressed with the volume of work shown. Sure there are some real gems in there and a lot of filler, but the filler seems to complete the book. I think it would be severly lacking if it only had 50 photos in it.