Street Photography is an important genre when it comes to Photography and throughout the history, photographing strangers has been an essential practice that allowed us to document our society, our culture, to explore human connections and to shape our collective narrative. While it’s easy to understand the impact of these portraits, it’s not always easy to practise the act of making them for fear of rejection and anxiety over the outcome. But if you look at contemporary photography, people still make meaningful portraits of unfamiliar faces, portraits that continue to add to the collective identity of us. Welcome to my course. My name is Sathya Peacock and I’m a documentary and portrait photographer based in London, england.
Over a year ago, I started a personal project of documenting the lives of canal boaters here in london. This journey has fostered a deep appreciation for the process of meeting new individuals and capturing their stories. Fear of rejection & of confrontation were certainly roadblocks for me, when I started. But I’ve learnt to make them part of the process now. I am grateful that this happened as the alternative would’ve been not telling their stories or making these images.
All this to say, we shouldn’t let the fear and anxiety around photographing strangers stop us from exploring the people around us that have interesting stories to share. In this course, I want to talk about the key elements involved in photographing strangers, how to be prepared, dealing with your anxiety and fear, how to communicate effectively and some practical tips to get you started on your journey of making beautiful portraits of strangers.
