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Double Exposure

This series pairs two artists exploring the same theme in street photography, examining their different takes on the subject.

A Tale of Two Días

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Double Exposure: Día de Muertos, a pair of Street photography series in two cities

Our Double Exposure series explores the same topic by two different Street photographers. In this edition we visit festivals of Día de Muertos. One photographer captures film and digital color Street portraits in Los Angles by day. The other uses Black and White digital photography, using long exposures and flash, to capture surreal candids in the Mexico City night.

First we have Los Angeles photographer Susan Catherine Weber, who has made it an annual tradition to photograph the local festivals. She says:

“Día de Muertos — Day of the Dead — has its history rooted in Mexico, as far back as Toltec, Aztec and other Nahua people. It’s believed that the Nahua thought it was better to celebrate death as the continuation of life, rather than to mourn death as a final ending. Candles at night light the way for the wandering souls. Scents of marigold flowers guide the spirits to their altars, where they can enjoy offerings of their favorite food, drink or trinkets.

Besides being an opportunity to remember and pay respects to those beloved relatives, friends, and pets who have died, it’s also a reminder to we who are living that our ancestors are always within us. Our lives intertwined in past and present.

At festivals, I look for beautifully painted faces. Traditional, and not so traditional, face painting and clever original costumes catch my interest. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for veils over faces, so that you have work to see the painted face and the glimmer in the eye. Though a nighttime visit to an event is lovely, I like to go to the festivities during the day. Then I can see all the altar photographs, food, drinks, and flowers. I like to watch family and friends prepare their altars. Plus, honestly, it’s less crowded during the day. Fewer people means I can talk to those celebrating the day, and hear all about who they are remembering and honoring.

I really love hearing these memories of the different people’s loved ones. I enjoy how people talk about people now passed on. It’s generally so positive. And when it slips into a slightly negative characteristic, it’s usually a forgiven negative. Laughed off. There is almost always a smile on their face as they share. It’s nice. I like hearing the first thing people say about a loved one — “He really loved the Dodgers his whole life!” — “She was the funniest cat I’ve ever had.” — “He was a really good teacher, and really cool dad.” — “She built the altars every year of our lives, now we are building one for her this year.” It feels good to connect to people, even if for only a minute of their lives. Now the stories of their loved ones are living within we who hear about these lives before our own, connecting us all to the continuation of life — past death.”

Susan Catherine Weber | Website | Instagram |

By night and mostly in black and white, Marie Reyes captures a surreal feeling in the annual parade in Mexico City. She tells:

“This series’ effects are entirely ‘in camera.’ I shoot at low speeds with a flash, and get close to subjects, up to 30 centimeters away. The post production is minimal, adjusting normal contrasts, or choosing black and white vs. color treatment.

The Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, is a Mexican celebration to honor our dead that dates back to pre-Hispanic times. In Mexico, it is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, offering the departed their favorite dishes and other things they enjoyed in life, presented on an altar with the traditional cempasuchíl flowers, and everything necessary for our dead to enjoy themselves.

These photos were taken over three consecutive years, during the parade to honor the dead which has been taking place in Mexico City in recent years. Here, everyone dresses up as a “Catrina”, which symbolizes death, in very elegant clothes.

This series is very special for me. When I lost my father four years ago, the pain I felt was tremendous, and the only way I could cope with it was by taking photos. I channeled all the pain I felt into photography, thus helping me in the healing process. Now I can remember my father without suffering, I remember him with great joy, and these photographs are the result.

Marie Reyes | Website | Instagram |

Women in Street
social media collaborative for female street photographers

Underwater Street

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In this Double Exposure profile, We meet two street photographers currently working on underwater photography projects in black and white. We’ll visit a Hong Kong beach with Michelle Rice Chan’s “Crab Seniors.” We also go boating and visit local swimming pools, as Silvia Hagge de Crespin explores “The Life Aquatic” in Singapore.

 

 

Michelle Rice Chan

 

How this series got started has a bit of a story. I have always been fascinated by the “Seventh Waves” series by Narelle Autio and Trent Parke. Their work is very different from one another, yet is similar in a sense of moodiness and surrealism, which I always look for, or try to include as an element in my own photographs.

 

 

I like challenges, so I thought of giving myself a challenge this summer — instead of strolling down streets and shooting, I borrowed an underwater camera (Canon Powershot S10, with underwater housing) from a friend, and started to play with this technique. In the beginning, I was just going to different beaches and piers in Hong Kong, but it wasn’t really working. They were just random shots of people underwater, and I felt something was lacking.

 

 

Coincidently, as a swimmer I was helping a friend to polish her swimming skills for a triathlon, and she mentioned the pier Wu Kai Sha, where she goes to every morning for her training practice. I tagged along one day, and I fell in love with the place, and the people. Since then, I started going there every day — to swim, to connect with people, and also to photograph.

 

People inspire me. Like Diane Arbus, “I wanted knowledge, not just to make a good photograph.” So for this series, with almost all of the photographs I make, I have interacted with the people there, and they have became so natural with me and my camera, that they don’t even notice when I actually click the shot. I want these photographs to be something more than just my perception of the world — to also remember who the people are, what they do, why they go swimming there, etc.

 

 

Black and white is always something that I see the world in, even though it’s in colour. It takes away the time effect and, somehow, it demolishes the presence of reality and takes me to my dreams and imagination. In general, black and white images are more emotionally impactful for me, and so I also want to capture images that hopefully make viewers feel the emotions that I left on the prints.

 

 

Michelle Rice Chan has a love of black and white. Each frame is her language to communicate about her emotions, ideas and beliefs. Her work has been exhibited in some of the major places in Hong Kong, including Hong Kong Arts Centre and Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. She currently is one of the founders of The Orange Moon Collective, and also a member of [DRKRMS] which is a photography platform for Asia’s best emerging photographers. Catch up with her on  Instagram.

 

Silvia Hagge de Crespin

This is an ongoing project that I started a few years ago, when my children were growing up in Singapore, and the swimming pool was the place to be. With disposable cameras, I started photographing them under the water when they learned how to swim. Over fifteen years later, I was tempted again by this medium when looking for photo projects to do at home. About two years ago, we started boating with my family — so now every Sunday, if I’m in Singapore, we go out to sea. Every week that I’m there, I explore either the sea or local pools, diving in with a small underwater digital camera.

This study is based on the beauty on how different bodies react in water. Bodies are gracefully suspended in sea water, yet while in swimming pool waters, they tend to be more static. How people react and behave in the water is also a long case study.

As with all of my work, my subjects don’t pose, and I try to get the natural beauty of it. When boating, my subjects may be people from other boats swimming by, but mainly are my friends and family who are swimming, or just talking with me while floating. They know I have a camera with me, but since the camera is mostly underwater, they hardly realize when I photograph.

I work with different projects at once, all them are quite different, so the approach is not the same. When doing candid street, I need to anticipate the action, the area, and act fast. With the underwater project, I let the moment flow, I shoot when I imagine something interesting is happening underwater, and since I can’t focus with my eyes, I have to guess where the subjects will end up in the frame.

The camera I use is a simple point and shoot underwater camera, so it’s very slow. Depending on weather, light, and tides — some days the visibility underwater is very bad, so that I can only see the water and see no person, no matter how close the subject is. So those days are quite frustrating. It’s mostly trial and error, with more errors than right ones. However, when I get a nice artistic shot, I feel so happy! I really love this project for the reason that it keeps surprising me when I less expect it.

Silvia Hagge de Crespin was born and raised in Argentina. She’s been an avid traveller from her youth, and passionate about different cultures and languages. Even if she has been photographing for many years, she had a breakthrough after a workshop with Magnum photographer Nikos Economopoulos, the first of many more. She has a variety of different projects, but the approach is always the same. She tries to create artistic images of what is before her eyes, not forcing any situation, keeping it as natural as she found it. She has been living in Singapore for the past 20 years. Find her on Instagram

 

Can you see through the street?

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Double Exposure explores two artists specializing in reflections

Natalia Jaeger

I continue to be intrigued by the playful and unexpected array of shapes, colors and shadows created by the natural juxtaposition of mirrored images. The city, with its wide variety of surfaces, is an environment conducive for this type of observation.

For the most part, the visual correlation emerging between the captured reflection and the subjects of my photographs is orchestrated by chance, not me. That is, I don’t seek a particular type of window or glass surface, nor do I take any steps in planning the shot. This ephemeral quality is precisely what draws me to street photography. A surprise within every image.

Most of my street portraits are of people behind windows. A distancing tactic which renders me almost invisible and thus helps me in capturing the ever so slight instance of a moment of self-reflection or — with a bit of luck — reverie.

 

Natalia Jaeger is from Venezuela, and currently resides in London. In addition to her photography, she is also a filmmaker interested in documenting people’s stories. She has a degree in multimedia from Arizona State University. A large portion of her creative research has involved interdisciplinary collaborations with composers, choreographers, playwrights and sound artists.

 

Jill Corson

I started making photographs that incorporate the help of store windows in 1998. I’m fascinated by the ability of glass to capture the inside of a space and the street simultaneously. I’m also drawn to and fascinated by color. I have made work for this series in New York, London, Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, and New Orleans. I made five of these images in New York. The sixth, Retro Mission, I made in the Mission District of San Francisco.

I have just a few rules for this series. I am never in the frame. I shoot with color transparency film. I exhibit the photographs full frame.

I set off without expectation. I don’t have a plan, other than a vague route I may follow. I’m on an expedition of seeing. Who knows what I’ll find on a given day? My goal is to capture the merger of what’s going on inside a space and what’s happening on the street. Serendipity plays an important role in my ability to see and record something beautiful and fleeting in the bat of an eye. My prints depict what I saw. They’re not montages of images that I made later at the computer using Photoshop.

I really love Hunt for the Right Shoe. There was a big sale at Sigerson Morrison in Soho. Women were hoarding piles of shoes in corners so that they could try them on. It was nuts. I made about seven frames. That’s the best one. This work continues to speak to both consumerism and the complexity of life in urban centers. Also, it simply celebrates the glory of color.

 

Jill Corson lives in the mid-Hudson Valley outside of New York City. She works as Director of Graduate Student Advising at Parsons School of Design. She walks New York’s streets looking for interesting intersections of the inside and outside, punctuated by color. Her tool, which feels like an extension of her hand, is a Nikon FM2 camera loaded with transparency film.

Art of indoor street photography

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 Double Exposure takes to the streets indoors, on an international gallery tour with your docents Karina Brys and Kristin Van den Eede.

Karina Brys

“As every street photographer knows, this art can be practiced almost anywhere. A public place, people — and you’re set. Among my favorite environments are museums. Of course, the art interests me, but it is an especially wonderful place for photography. When a sign at the entrance forbids photography, I’m suddenly much less eager to go in. Luckily in this smartphone age, that happens less and less. It’s amazing how often the viewers blend in with the surrounding art, and some museums offer a splendid atmosphere.”

Aljafería Palace, Zaragoza, Spain
Berlin City Hall
The Kennedys Museum, Berlin
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Bozar, Brussels
Acropolis, Athens
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Karina Brys is from Antwerp, Belgium, and developed a passion for street photography while spending six months in China in 2003. She enjoys shooting in many European cities, and a particular favorite destination is Spain. 

 

Kristin Van den Eede

“I’ve always enjoyed going to museums; there’s something slightly magical about them. You walk in, and it can be anything. You can walk out disappointed, bored, dazzled, intrigued, or all of these things at the same time. For me, going to a museum is also an important part of how I discover cities. I love travelling, especially to big cities, and at some point this sort of merged with my interest in street photography.

Museumgoers are always quiet and composed, yet also incredibly expressive and amusing. They are so preoccupied with what they see that I manage to become entirely invisible, and that’s how I prefer to take pictures. On top of that, I also want to capture that childlike sense of awe that some — most — people experience when they look at something interesting in a museum. It’s completely guileless and I love it. I like to think that it’s a moment of introspection when these people’s polished surface falls away and you see their true self: vulnerable, thoughtful, captivated, and also essentially very much alone.”

Terror Haza, Budapest
Neues Museum, Berlin
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Vasamuseet, Stockholm
Neues Museum, Berlin
Natural History Museum, London
Fotografiska, Stockholm

 


Kristin Van den Eede is from Ghent, Belgium. Getting lost in the urban jungle is a true passion of hers, and she is either constantly taking pictures, or thinking about taking them. By day, she is a language teacher, translator and proofreader, but almost all her spare time is devoted to photography.