WE OWN THE NIGHT

Meet the photographers in Colette's new exhibition, From the Street to the Night.

Andy Wahol once said, “If you don’t know Patrick McMullan, you ought to get out more.” McMullan, Nan Goldin… They set the scene for the social shutterbugs to come, establishing their brand of unstyled, unbiased photography as a trend that would stick so long as people partied. Then, a few years ago, one’s sense of style became as beguiling as their social habits…hence, street style. It’s pretty clear this is more than a trend. Even Colette, the omniscient arbiter of cool, has dubbed it an official genre: “social photography.” The Paris boutique/gallery is currently exhibiting From the Street to the Night, showcasing the best candids from Marco Dos Santos to MarktheCobrasnake. We caught up with a few photographers who troll the city streets looking for stylish denizens, and a couple who would rather come out at night.
SAMANTHA GILEWICZ



DIRTY DIRTY DANCING (Alistair Allan)
What do you think of the recent craze of street style and party picture taking?
I only appreciate a few of the other people doing this sort of thing. I'm first and foremost a very technical photographer, and only a recent convert to digital, but have realized that everyone who buys a digital SLR all of a sudden thinks they are a professional photographer. I know a lot of my pictures aren't perfect, but I place certain restrictions on myself, which other photographers don't, like an extremely narrow depth of field.
What do like about this type of photography?
Primarily, the immediacy. That’s what’s great about digital—I can get the pictures up before I would have even got a roll back from the lab. It's all spontaneous, no planning, no stylists standing out of frame to whip the model back into shape...just the people as they really are (or at least are for an evening).
dirtydirtydancing.com

FACEHUNTER (Yvan Rodic)
What do you think of Colette coining an official genre, “social photography,” for street style/party pics?
It was time to organize such an exhibition that shows more than a genre, but a culture on its own. These sites celebrate the self-generated content. More and more people are continuously checking pictures of themselves. It shows how much people are inspired by real people and don't follow blindly what magazines say. We call them the MySpace generation. [This type of photography] is fresher, more random, and more diversified.
facehunter.org

STREET PEEPER (PHIL OH)
What makes for an interesting subject?
It's really just if someone's style stands out from the crowd. I try to keep the photos as diverse as possible, but all the pictures taken by me or the other photographers are sort of just reflections of our own personal style…or what we'd like to wear if we were cross-dressers.
streetpeeper.com





LINLEE ALLEN
What do you think of the recent craze of street style and party picture taking?
Bring it on! Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame and rightly so. The increasing rate of bloggers shooting street style can only be a positive influence for all the Facehunters and Sartorialists out there. It keeps us on our toes.
What do you like about this type of photography?
What I like about shooting on the street is the spontaneity of it. In essence, it's all about capturing a fleeting moment. And importantly, I like having the option to both photograph and post any image that I want to. Earlier this month I was in New York working on a project with Nike interviewing kids about streetwear, and half of them may have looked good, but their heads were so far up their own asses, I just didn't want to waste the film, you know?
linleeloves.blogspot.com

JEREMY KOST
What do you think of Colette coining an official genre, “social photography,” for street style/party pics?
I think that creating work in public moments is something that's been done for a long time: Nan Goldin's work from the Pride Parades in NYC, Henri Bresson, etc…but they weren’t put into a box. I think the folks at Colette are visionaries and always will be. So many of us in the show focus on very different groups of people and I think that’s what they were looking at in terms of From the Street to the Night…the title says it all. I have to be honest, I'm thrilled to be alongside Bob Collacello, whose work is legendary and phenomenal. These days everyone feels as though they can do the same thing that they've seen on blogs. What happened to composition, timing, constructs, etc.? Simply snapping a picture doesn't make it a good picture...
roidrage.com

fromthestreettothenight.blogspot.com

[Above photo of Jeremy Scott and Agyness Deyn,
BY MARKTHECOBRASNAKE]



This story was published on October 13, 2007.