Small Acts of RecognitionSomeone recently asked me if I meditate. I said no. But then I wrote this blog.
The truth is, for me, the act of photographing the world has become a meditation on being part of it.
There’s a quiet exchange, a deal if you like, that happens when you carry a camera in the street. Between you, the world, and the people moving through it. It’s not always about chasing Bresson’s decisive moment. You notice a stare that lingers a second longer than it should, and in that quiet moment, photography stops being simple documentation and starts becoming something else: a mirror, a question, and maybe even a form of connection.
You move your body through physical space, chasing light and skin, and yet you’re also on stage. You get noticed. Eyes catch the camera, sometimes the posture, the intent. When you’re seen, you respond, a deflection, a soft explanation, a “Hey, I love your hat.” More often than not, people receive it with warmth. This practice asks for presence, not just to witness, but to feel. Every frame becomes a small act of recognition: I see you. You exist. You mattered, even if just for this moment.
And maybe that’s what we all want, in some way, to be seen. Not just looked at, but truly registered. Sensitively, carefully, and held just for that split second.
Of course, street photography, like life, is full of contradiction: harmony and discord, style and mess, individuality within the collective. It’s not about perfect moments, but real ones.
In that mise-en-scène, cities blur. People move past each other, wrapped in their own life’s momentum. And in that blur, individuality can dissolve. But, for a few, it also flares, ignites even. A certain wandering gait, the weight of a glance, the bright pink yellow-spotted coat. And, if you walk the same streets long enough, something strange happens, you begin to notice something more tangible: some people return. The same faces, the same bodies, moving through the same spaces. Not fragments, not impressions, real people. The man with the walking stick and sharp coat. The woman whose outfits shift daily, but always carry the same deliberate attention. Now, they’ve become part of your landscape.
There’s a relationship with these dear strangers. You don’t know their names, their backstories or their fears, or the sound of their voice - but somehow, you do know them.
Their presence lingers, not just on film, but in us. These are not just anonymous subjects anymore. They exist, persist, and in doing so, they hold something up to ourselves. What draws your eye, again and again? What do you keep photographing without meaning to? What keeps you up at night? All of it becomes a mirror. Street photography, fuck it - life - then, is not just about witnessing. It’s about tracking your own attention, where you place your energy, how you draw conclusions, and what that says about who you are in the world.
There’s an intimacy to photographing someone, even if they never see you. Especially then. The space somehow collapses. A stranger becomes the centre of your attention, their gesture held, examined and composed. You gently become a quiet witness, but also something unsettling. A kind of thief. Susan Sontag (I know I always go on about her, but honestly, what a book) wrote that to photograph someone is to violate them, to turn them into an object that can be possessed. It’s a piercing take, stings a little, but it lingers. So, who has the power here?
Well, sorry Susan, this time I rebuke you.
It doesn’t have to feel like possession. To me, it feels like reverence. A way of saying, I saw you, and it meant something. There’s no consent form, usually no conversation, only a split second, a click, and the weight of responsibility. The image lasts. They return to their life. I walk away with a fragment, changed. And often the shame of the blurry mess that I ended up with.
And so - we return to the same old topic. Intent. It shapes almost everything we do. Not just the photograph, but the individual, the mental and the physical. Will you get up today and go to the gym, make a painting, hug someone you care about? And what is your intent? The choice to frame one person over another, to lift the camera, to choose - like we do every day in all our little decisions, adds up to something. It becomes a roadmap of our inner world, stitched together by instinctive choices that are never truly neutral.
But, very rarely - very rarely - when we’re not performing, no longer pressing our intent against our true self, we find something closer to the honest version.
That’s radical, dude.
How many people have you met who see you, not as you wish to be, but as you are?
It’s disarming.
Actually, freakishly scary.
That unguarded moment, caught without our permission, is simply us. Not because it’s composed, but because it wasn’t shaped by our own intent.
In that moment - snapped by the precision of a keen mind, hopefully by someone soft and kind (but not always), we are exposed. We are so vulnerable. And with a flick of their wrist, they can render us beautiful… or destroy us.
In that reversal (I’ve pulled the good old switcheroo on you there), something real happens. The photos of our life become a mirror of our inner world.
There’s a reason they call photography shooting.
Damn - Susan already said that.
