Why on earth would you want to go around photographing strangers? (Some thoughts #4)
Over the last few weeks, armed only with a camera, I’ve spent countless hours wandering around the CBD of Sydney like an overly enthusiastic tourist. However, my subjects rarely happened to be big old bridges and buildings make of orange peels, but could be found in the spaces below, in-between, and amongst these piles of concrete and steel. My chosen subjects are the life blood of a city, pumping through the street, and occupying the skyline above.
But why? What value is there in capturing the humanity of our public spaces, and possibly pushing the ethical boundaries around privacy? Well, because I don’t think this process is just about capturing the humanity around us, even though that would be a worthwhile pursuit in itself. If you look, really look, and then really think about what your looking at, you may stumble across the wonderfully simple, but extremely important idea, that everyone else’s life is as complex and vivid as your own. Now I’m not saying that this type of photography tells the whole story of its subjects, but it does remind us that there is one - with its tone hidden within every expression, scar, and wrinkle. I think this work reminds us that present in the urban landscape is not simply a mass of humanity, but an aggregate of individuals, within each exisiting a world as vivid, complicated, and painful as our own. These subjects are not just the urban professionals that are mostly commonly found in cities like ours. They are competent fathers, and loving mothers. They are sons, daughters, and faithful best friends. They are people that bring love and happiness into the lives of people close to them, in the exact same way we do to the people close to us.
But why is this important? Why do we need to understand others in the way we understand ourselves? Because this is the premise of empathy. It’s the key piece of information we need to understand the humanity of the people around us, so we can treat them with the same care that we treat ourselves. I don’t think this is particularly groundbreaking information, or that people didn’t know this already, but I do want the audience to understand that this could be one of arts most important uses - its ability to bring the complexity of others to our attention, and in turn develop healthy, human interaction, with empathetic understanding as its core.
