This entry is all about making street portraits during a global pandemic. Think of this as a follow up post or sequel to “From the archives - 08.19.2020” .
In my previous post about making street portraits, I talked about how I became comfortable with approaching strangers for their portraits. However, with COVID-19 having been around for close to a year now, this posed a challenge for me both creatively and mentally. Those challenges being: Do I want to approach strangers during a pandemic? How do I even begin to ask people for their portraits? How could I even make an interesting portrait with most of their face covered?
At first it was pretty difficult, no one was really out. The streets of San Francisco was still relatively empty which meant I had to look a little harder or really keep an eye out for anyone that piqued my interest. I thought the aspect of the mask would hide too much of the persons face or be too distracting for a portrait. But then I soon realized that the masks people are wearing became more expressive or added a layer of mystery to them. The masks had an interesting way of adding to the subjects outward personality but without being too distracting. Some people even took down their masks because they preferred their expressions shown (All their choice, I didn’t ask them to).
I also knew I had to change my approach to interacting with strangers. Being the soft spoken person I am, I had to learn to communicate with people through a mask that usually muffles my voice. This meant I had to project my voice louder than I’m comfortable with, but not in a way that changes my tone and speak with clear intentions. I would still compliment the people I talked to as a means of connecting with them; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I felt like most people didn’t want to interact with a stranger and I totally respected that. But of the people that did let me photograph them I kept the interactions brief and respected their boundaries.
I feel like photographing people in masks is going to be the norm for a while until things are deemed safe and Covid is not a serious threat anymore.
Shot on Kodak Ektachrome E100 and Kodak Tri-X 400 with a Leica M-A and a 35mm Summicron.
