"The Photographs I Love" 2 – Alex Webb

“I always hope to come back from my travels with photos that can open people's eyes and reveal something about the enigmatic nature of the world we live in, its truth, complexity, beauty and suffering.”
(Alex Webb)

 

Nueva Loredo, Mexico, 1996

The second photograph I want to tell you about is by Alex Webb. Born in San Francisco in 1952, he has been a Magnum photographer since 1979.

I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago during a meeting organized by the Leica Store in Rome, before one of his workshops. He was with his wife Rebecca Norris and I had his latest book released in Italy signed for me: “Street Photography and Poetic Image”.

Delightful and simple person, not at all vain.

 

“Alex Webb”. Rome – 16 November 2016

His was an interesting journey.

He began to photograph thanks to the enchantment of Cartier-Bresson's photos, preferring black and white. He photographs American society, but finds no satisfaction. As he writes:

“Like many photographers of my generation, I started with black and white. But in the mid-1970s I ended up in a dead end.”

 

Photography does not satisfy him as he would like.

It was in those years that he came across a book: “The Comedians” by Graham Greene.

He's only 23 but he starts fantasizing about the tropics. Haiti and its intense colors, which emerged from the pages of that book, push him to embark on a journey, not only physical but visual.

He leaves for Port-au-Prince, stays there for three weeks and discovers the color.

     “That journey transformed me as a photographer and as a person.”

 

Colors in America were only good for advertising, while in those lands color is an integral part of their culture.

Haiti, Mexico, Cuba. Color as a language and the street as a mental place.

In Haiti he discovers another element that will become fundamental in his photographic journey: disorder.

And a skilled photographer has to dominate the disorder, he has to shape it.

 

Tehuantepec, Mexico, 1985

It's in Mexico, in Nuevo Loredo, that he takes this image, which I adore, and which I have chosen as my favorite among his.

Alex Webb is indisputably a master at organizing chaos.

The more crowded a place is in front of his eyes, the more his talent emerges.

 

It's incredible.

 

I often show this photograph during workshops, and I always stress that a photo is the freezing of a moment; we only see it, but we must be able to set it in motion again: understand what was before the click, bring it to life.

Only in this way can you fully understand the difficulty of certain shots.

In this photograph, some composition rules are concentrated with an impressive naturalness: subjects on thirds, natural frames, silhouettes, underexposure, different depths.

And then details that emerge after successive visions, such as the shop sign in the background that can be read completely, the girl's enamored and happy expression, the book held in the hand by the man on the left that is perfectly framed by the shadow.

Finally, the detail that really freaks me out: the top of the little girl's shoe touching the boy's arm by an inch on a different plane. With an infinitesimal precision that recalls the foot in perfect leavening on the puddle of the jumping man, in the famous photo by Cartier-Bresson.

All this not while they were still posing for him, but in the turmoil of their lives, in the disorder of their actions.

Here all pigeonholed as in a musical score.

 

Sounds easy to say.

It is Webb himself who comments on this photograph.

“I am fascinated by the way in which different contexts, situations and moments can coexist, interacting with each other and defining each other. I love photographs that don't just show one thing but the simultaneous existence of several things, in ways that can sometimes appear contradictory.

This is not a complexity for its own sake; my images are complex because the world I observe is complicated and mysterious.”

 

Cite Solei, Haiti, 1986

He has taken many photographs like these, and his books are always a magnificent journey into orderly chaos.

Whenever we enter a crowded market, a street teeming with people, a playground, Alex Webb is on our minds.

These are tough challenges for those who love this type of photography, most of the time frustrating.

You have to master the breath, the turmoil, the sense of failure that often sends you home with no valid image.

 

But when that magic happens, when the confusion unfolds before our eyes in a readable, musical form, then there is no greater satisfaction.

And you know that every hour, day, month will always be different. Nothing happens twice the same as itself.

And there is only one way to understand it: to walk.

“It's only by walking that I understand how to relate to a place. Because what else does a street photographer if not walk and observe and wait and talk, and then observe and wait again, without ever ceasing to believe that immediately around the corner the unexpected, unknown or secret heart of the known will appear?” 

(Alex Webb)

 

Fort Kochi, India, 2014

 

READ ALSO:

• On Rickshaw: "My Bangladesh" Photo Series (4) 
• On Eye Contact 

Alex Webb: “The light of the tropics” (Contrasto, 2019)
Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb: “Street Photography and Poetic Image” (Postcart/Aperture, 2014)

To see Alex Webb in action: In Frame - Ep04c02 Hannam-dong Sunrise Alley

 

Italian version