Joseph Szymanski | Street Photographer

With refernce to Jim Goldstein’s article on Digital Photography School 3 Minutes with Photographer Joseph Szymanski, One photographer whose style and subject material builds off of subtlety and mystery is Joseph Szymanski, who specializes in dark moody black and white photography.

Joseph szymanki says in his biography

"I was born on a Monday, January the 12th, in Wyandotte, a small suburb of Detroit, and spent my entire childhood in South Eastern Michigan. After secondary school I moved to San Francisco to attend college. There I studied art formally for five years, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in documentary photography.

Following graduation, I worked as a freelancer in San Francisco for a short time, shooting for various publications around the Bay Area. Somewhere along the line I became rather fed up with the direction the freelance world was heading at the behest of the digital insurrection. Value has now been placed entirely on volume and immediacy. Quality, artistry and depth are no longer appreciated or desired. A depressing reality, but a reality nonetheless. As such, the market has seen a deluge of mediocrity on a biblical scale.

I quickly abandoned the freelance game, and picked up the film cameras again, returning to the darkroom with a more artistic approach, able to focus solely on my own personal work. Since then I have realized that I am interested in the process of making photographs just as much as I am interested in photographs themselves. Something is lost when the process is removed, which is primarily why I continue to work using traditional methods to this day.

Today I continue to live in San Francisco, working on personal photographic projects, as well as several web projects with other photographers and designers"

szymanki says

"My work tends to be a bit dark, though I don’t believe it is necessarily dark in nature. A great deal of my images focus specifically on light and shadow, and the shapes of things I find on the street. I often find that content is almost secondary, at least in my own mind, though it is of course often an important element in my photographs. I suppose my work is really about memories, places, and pieces of things along the way. For me, it’s always been the way I chronicle where I’ve been and what I’ve done"

Joseph Szymanski when asked about a quick tip that he’d give people getting into street photography to help them improve,answered:

"I don’t think there is any one tip that can improve your work. The best thing for someone starting out is to keep shooting, always carry a camera, but remember to take your time. Always be looking at good work, inspiration is a constant process. Remember that well thought out photographs take time and effort, and quality is always more desirable that quantity"

From Szymanski’s Palestine collection