I’m often asked “when I got into photography” and there’s no good answer to that question. Of course, to a large degree, I’d been into it at a young age—at least high school, if not earlier—but that’s not a satisfying answer since I certainly wasn’t shooting back then. So if not then, when? Was it when I started buying my first non-kit lenses in Korea and went into Seoul to practice street photography? Was it in Iraq when I treated my battalion’s deployment as the opportunity to self-embed even though I hardly picked up a camera for years afterwards? What about 2006 when I first started shooting regularly, especially since it was at this point that I started my long-running Chicago documentary project?
To me, none of those are really the right answers—to the extent there is a right answer, it is May, 2011.
The photo below is the second frame I ever made in Paris—on my first trip to France. The story of that trip is a tale in its own right, but as for this frame, it was rare moment—at that point in my photographic development—where I saw the moment (the “decisive moment” if I can quote Cartier-Bresson, which, since we’re talking about Paris, I think I can)—did not hesitate, and got the shot. As it happened, I got a LOT of shots on this trip—some of the best photos I’d taken until that point and still some of the best photos I’ve ever taken of Paris. And out of that trip, something snapped. I realized that I hadn’t been taking photography seriously, that I wasn’t really doing it intentionally and I wasn’t really trying to grow at it. After May 2011, that started to change. It was definitely two steps forward, one back, that sort of thing (HDR would remain a thing for a few more years). But from this point forward, things began to change.
And this still remains one of the best street candids I’ve shot in my life.
The Boulevard Saint-Germain, 6eme arrondissement, Paris. May 26, 2011.
