Brian Q. Webb
I’m going to start with a preemptive “No, not because the iPad 2 has a camera.” because, let’s face it, the camera in the iPad is crap. You’re better off using the camera in your phone in a pinch if just for awkward hold-ability reasons. And I guess I should also clearly state that it’s not because the screen is better. The iPad 2 retains the same 720p resolution display with ‘magical’ oliophobic coating that ‘magically’ exaggerates finger marks. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin at the beginning.
If I’m to be polite, I would describe Eyal Binehaker as a street photography purist. Others not so polite might replace the word ‘purist’ with something else, but the point is that he has a strict concept of what street photography is and he critiques other’s works based on that concept. Normally, a person with such a rigid view would be open to criticism of having such an absolutist view, but Eyal is difficult to criticize.
He is not the judgmental hypocrite that most absolutists are. He practices what he preaches in his own work, which is why I’m so happy to feature it here. His stuff rocks.
Like last week’s subject, both Ethan Chiang and I have something in common beyond a love for street photography. In this case, we have both experienced living on both edges of the Pacific. He currently makes his home in Seoul, the place of his birth, but has also lived out bits of his life in San Francisco and Taipei. I asked him to be a part of this series because I love the noir look that he achieves in his images and they way they tell a concise-but-complete story.
You’ll see what I mean.
Besides being street photography enthusiasts, Lukasz Kazimierz and I are both educators and “Western” expats making a home on a volcanic island-country in Asia, me in Taiwan and him in Japan. What I personally love about his work and what led me to ask him to participate in the Photojazz Five series is his eye for color. He often uses the strong, singular lighting elements that reveal themselves at night to great advantage. Through his images one can see how the night lights up at night in Tokyo.
This week’s featured street photographer is 28 year old student-spouse-mother Dawn Hendsbee, from the French half of language-bipolar Canada.
Insert Dudley Do-Right joke here.
Although studying to become a Radiation Oncology Therapist, being a mommy, and being a wife takes up all of her time, always having a camera in her bag allows here to exercise her right brain in the spaces between the ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Today, October 10 2011, marks 100 years since the Wuchang uprising that sparked the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Imperial Era in China and the beginning of the Republic of China government. It has since survived World War II and the Maoist revolution to create the autonomous state of Taiwan and evolve there into the only example of Chinese self-governance in the totality of Chinese history.
Not bad for the first century.
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