Hello friends,

How are you all? It’s been a busy season for SPM, with so many wonderful stories coming in and myself here in Argentina eating way too much and learning more about the art of nicknaming people. First up, a few of my own thoughts. 

After many years of working freelance for content machines of all sorts, I have sometimes found myself calling what we publish here at SPM “content.” I was recently reminded by our friend Chris Gampat of The Phoblographer that I need to rewire my brain and stop calling what we do “content.” He argued, “We’re photographers, editors, writers, etc. Content gets mixed in with everything else out there and all of us deserve respect. Jamel Shabazz isn’t a content creator, he’s a photographer. My Chemical Romance aren’t content creators, they’re the musicians I’m listening to right now. We, in general, have to reframe our minds and our labels lest we all just be mistreated by marketing machines.” It’s a great point and one I thought worth sharing with you all. What you all create, the effort you put into it, is without a doubt worthy of respect. 

You may have read in the latest newsletter a few quotes from Berenice Abbott that I found in the book Photographers on Photography, edited by Nathan Lyons. I wanted to share one more with you that I couldn’t work into the article. I shall leave it here for you, sans commentary: 

“I believe the true photographer is a curiously odd species, not easy to define, but his photographic gift is highly charged and trained vision. This vision is focused, by the nature of the medium, on the here and now.”

Then she added, “Realist, par excellence, inescapably contemporary, Lewis Hine had this photographic gift.” Definitely check out Lewis’ work too if you have a chance. Now, onto our subscriber spotlight.

Subscriber Spotlight: Paul Kessel

Paul Kessel has been a subscriber to SPM since 2019. In 2022, we featured him in a video interview where he talked about his approach to taking street shots, and a pandemic inspired self portrait series that is imaginative and quite relatable for anyone who was stuck at home alone for months on end during a lockdown. See above. The interview is definitely worth a watch, but I wanted to share Paul’s street photography origin story here, as I find it quite interesting.

Paul told us he started street photography at 69.99 years old. One day on a whim he wandered into ICP and signed up for a course. He had no plans, not even a great interest in photography. He was just looking for something to do in life. His first photo outside of ICP was of himself, but when he got back to class and looked at it, he noticed something surprising. The camera had seen an array of things, frozen in the frame, that he hadn’t seen at the time with his eyes. “This is great!” he thought. He didn’t know why it was great, but it piqued his interest. That’s what got him going, and for the next ten years, he kept on taking courses. 

Before street photography, Paul was an avid golfer. He was good at it too, so when he could no longer play, he felt a real loss. This is why, he says, “I would never use the word art when I refer to what I do, sport I would call it. It never occurred to me it was art, and it still doesn’t. And the reason I latched onto street photography was [because] it really felt like a game, like a sport.” Paul compared street photography to sports saying, “I think the combination of failure being built into it and the thrill of getting a home run, no I shouldn’t say home run, I’ve never gotten a home run, of getting a hit every now and then, makes you want to keep doing it.” This is how his “addiction” began. And I think we’d all agree that he, in fact, has hit a home run with his now famous image “Q Train.”

Here’s another gem from that interview. Paul took a couple of courses with Bruce Gilden, and something he learned on the first day of class made an impact on him. He told us that Bruce said you don’t learn by workshops, you don’t learn through classes. You learn by going out and taking bad pictures and then asking yourself what went wrong. There’s a lot more in the interview so go give it a watch when you’ve got some time. 

I also love hearing Paul’s thoughts now and again through email. (I consider you all my pen pals when you write, just so you know.) A few months ago, Paul wrote to us on the piece “You don’t need to go anywhere (even if you want to)” with this insightful comment: “I have recently thought about how often “street photographers” travel and how the photographs are more “travel photography ” as opposed to making something interesting in one’s own backyard. Winogrand’s best photos were in NYC when he lived there and Cartier-Bresson most admired photos were in Paris. In my opinion, there is too much reliance on travel, and events as well, and this compensates for too little creative seeing.” Food for thought, no? 

All to say, you’ve probably heard of Paul before, but hopefully now you feel like you know him just a little bit better. And you can keep getting to know him. There are more wise words from Paul on his blog. Each of his posts are worth a read. Go check it out. 

Coming up at SPM

More work by Nathaniel Paolinelli is coming up soon as he is our October feature photographer. If you haven’t listened to that episode of the podcast, go give it a watch or a listen. Nathaniel has done some amazing work, and he’s super chill to talk to. I really enjoyed learning more about what street photography is like in Albuquerque too. Oh hey, and speaking of the podcast, if you love it and haven’t left us a review yet…what are you waiting for knucklehead? 😉

There’s plenty more coming up in the September issue, but I wanted to get you excited about a couple of pieces coming up in the October issue too! We’ve got a joint piece by Lauren Mitzelfelt and Ave Pildas about the work in his book Africatown, where you can learn more about respectfully documenting a culture or any social group really that is not your own. Also coming in the October issue, a crazy story about a banned tradition that is actually pretty dangerous that refuses to die out. I’ll leave it at that. 

Until the next one amigos,

Ashley