Lifeblood
One of the great joys I’ve discovered in my travels is capturing the world around me. Whether it be cities or remote landscapes, understanding and appreciating my environment becomes part of what slows me down, allows me to soak in the richness of where I am, and delve more into the ordinary or banal. Call it “street photography” or whatever else you want, but these scenes remind you that you’re an intruder in someone’s space, an alien, and a voyeur of a specific place and time.
There’s always a sizeable ethical debate about consent to be captured in photographs. The consensus is that if you’re in public, your rights to anonymity are wholly determined by your conversation with the photographer and their agreement to preserve your privacy. That said, there’s nuance to communicating this, which matters for another day and time. Regardless of your opinion, I’m careful to ensure that I only capture enough to render the scene specifically for the memory and nothing else.
Without people, our world would be boring. As I continue to note in these stories, the narratives from engaging in the world around us invariably involve people: you, me, us, we. We’re all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, religions, and colours. We are the mosaic splashed across a cityscape, rendering it resplendent in texture, colour, and expression. From La Sagrada Família’s expressive spires to the tattoos of graffiti plastered on the stucco and metal, the city is at its best when people are involved.
Finding ourselves winding through narrow streets, cars emblazed with riotous colours of spray paint and social expression, we chase the light and our stomachs, respectively. Finding the source of the smells from the local panaderias and the falling sun’s rays tickling the uppermost windows of each gothic quadrant, we’re caught up in a web of streets, noise, and people at every turn. Each corner we turn around leads to another adventure, if only for the next ten meters. The distant church bells echo the time down the stone corridors, the decay of sound crashing into the following bell toll like a wave on the sand. There’s a burbling life to these places, captured by putting one foot in front of the next.
Not everything is pleasant or wonderful. The odors of civilization are everywhere, cast hurriedly aside as people move from this thing to that. The litter of consumption lies tossed carelessly aside or overflowing from the collection bins. The smell of decay works in your nostrils, reminding you that there’s another moldy offering or two for every loaf of bread. Cleanliness is perhaps best reserved for hospitals and surgery wards; here, in the back alleys and walkways of the every day, you are provided that truth. You get to choose whether that’ll offend your sensibilities or enlarge your perception that the world isn’t as the influencers or Instagram would have it seem. People living in these places survive however they can, doing whatever they must, for their benefit, not yours.
I find that wrapping these memories up in the container of a picture doesn’t always do it justice. I can’t tell you of the joys and excitement those children in the picture feel. I can try to capture the moment of their rapture in a cup or cone, their relative reminding them of this thing or that. I can attempt to impress upon you the desire for tacos written large across the man’s face, tucked behind the metal box on the street corner, waiting patiently, with a reservation in mind but not in reality. I can draw attention to the couple holding hands, walking down the cobbled street, bags in hand, having bought the espadrilles seen in a sheltered storefront.
But what little I can convey in pictures, I can certainly bring to your senses in words a story woven from the digital ether of these fleeting moments in a Barcelona street. And perhaps, through as poor a conveyance as this, you’ll understand more about what causes a city to thrive and how people are indeed the lifeblood of where we go.
May it ever be so.
