Notes on photographing strangers
How I approach someone I've never met and, twenty minutes later, make a portrait that feels like them.
The camera is the smallest part of it. Most of a portrait happens before I lift it.
I talk first. Not about the shoot — about the walk over, the weather, anything. I let the silences sit instead of filling them. People perform for about ten minutes and then, if you don’t reward the performance, they stop. That’s the face I want: the one that arrives when someone forgets they’re being looked at.
I shoot slowly on purpose. A film camera helps — the pauses to advance the frame give both of us a breath. Nobody has ever relaxed in front of a motor drive.
