Oaxaca, 2018

My photographic journey has lead me through a series of stunning expeiences all over these years. My main focus is and always will be for truthful photographs that might represent a document and useful to society. As a street photographer and photojournalist, making more rarely breaking news and more social documentary, I am interested to make photos that favor could a better understanding of ourselves, of the others, the evolution of society.

In this context, is pretty clear how street photography may represent an opportunity and also a service to community. I talked about this in conferences, also in the most prestigious universities in Mexico. I said this also when I was invited by Antiguo Colegio San Ildefondo in Mexico City to present the Cheryl Dunn’s Eveybody Street documentary movie.

My work with the cameras is always connected to my heart, allowing me to produce something where heart, mind and eye are close and empathic to subjects and themes photographed.  All over these years I can see how this approach lead me to a better understanding  of myself and the world around us.

With this “mode on” the camera allow me to record the emotion and the facts producing something with a documentary  value: it is pretty important to me that a photo is not just based on aesthetics. I am essentially a documentary photographe and I am constantly looking fo stories. Remember, guys, we the street and documentary photographers are storytellers with a camera. Otherwise we could make product photography or food photography. 

My love story through photography is based on my interest to make valuable stories about our society. And I apply this interest also when I am busy to transmit it to my students. I insist a lot on this to get from my students

During these ten years I made photographs of men, women, children with a real interest for any subject: I hope this can be seen on my photos. Of couse the approach as street photographe changes a little respect to my photojournalism, but respect and empathy are always a must have in my “attitude bag”.

It doesn’t matter, in any case, what kind of photos I am making, my focus for me eveytime I make a photo is always a careful evaluation about what to include in the frame and the reason why I am including it. It is fundamental to have clear ideas, even when you have few seconds to evaluate, framing and pressing the shutter. It becomes vital to have the idea of the kind of information I need to show in order to get the understanding of the viewer.

My workshops are focused on  showing to my students how to get this philosophy and approach.The workshops, online o in person are always interested to create a true “building laboratory” by evaluating approaches and attitudes and by knowing the photographer to find his own vision, focused on him/her and avoiding to propose a general formula. Any workshop is unque based on the student/s.

Don’t miss out on this chance to build your vision and personal style through my street photography tuition! Once you submit your payment, your spot is guaranteed for the workshop. You can choose to make a workshop with me in Mexico in person, we have available super exciting workshops in Mexico City and Oaxaca, or you can decide to take the new online street photography workshops!

If you have any questions about the workshops, please email to alex@alexcoghe.com

Street Photography Workshops

OAXACA WORKSHOPS

Online Street Photography Workshops

I always say street photography is more than a genre. It is, in my opinion, a method, an approach, a way of living photography, pretty different from those who have a more academic and orthodox background.

As you know I am a photojournalist and commercial photographer. Commercial photography to me is not necessarily intended as an empty, superficial photography. To make an example I know a lot of colleagues making great things in their field of specialization that is wedding photography.

My specialty is, apart from documentary photography, portraits, fashion street style and erotica.

I assume that everything I do has at least one artistic inspiration. My focus is about making photographs with a story and with a documentary value. I am on the internet, sharing a lot, and I use social media, but everything would make very little sense if my photographs went to die on the web. The true meaning is given by the prints and the physicality of the photograph.

Street Photography is about reaction time, mastering in a very short time the arrangement of the elements in the composition. It is about to make a story through a picture.

I can see how valuable this is when I am photographing my models.

If you are familiar with my work as portrait and erotic photographer you already know I avoid to make the typical photos of books for models. I think the influence of street photography is clearly visible in the photographs I do and propose. As a photographer I changed a lot, evolved, continuously taking off from the comfort zone. But I remain faithful to myself. To my research as a visual storyteller.

I am sure street photography is responsible that my photography with girls is not what you expect. Of couse there are othe influences in my vision, but street photography can be an approach and method to see in another way any kind of genre we can do. It is the reason why I propose to my students my workshops with more fluid and open ideas, not bound to rules, avoiding to create fundamentalisms and watertight compartments.

Street Photography is an opportunity to learn how to see, also inside ourselves.

I am and I will always be grateful to street photography. I learned, I learn and I will learn thanks to the expeience as a street photographer.

I hate the term ‘street photography’, it’s a stupid term. – Garry Winogrand

Roma, 2018

The contradictions excite me.

I often use hyperboles to provoke.

As a photographer is even easier: I just try not to get bored from what I shoot as years pass…

And shooting on the streets is already a big challenge. Not reason to create others in other contexts. 

I hate street photography because is a trend right now.

I love street photography because perfectly represents my philosophy as a photographer. 

I have a tattoo that bears the inscription street photographer on my left arm.

When I fell in love with the street photography it was a game for a few. For me it will always know the most exciting way to conceive photography. Not knowing what is going to pass before your eyes…this is the secret to be so addictive. For me is and always will be unplanned photography: otherwise will be very boring and…fake.

I see too many prissy photographs today, too many photographers perfectionists. They bore me terribly. I imagine them standing still and wait for everything to be assembled. I have an idea of street photography as something adrenaline, and that adrenaline, the energy, the tension I have to see in the photographs. I see too many static photos and too many static photographers. And, again, too perfect. Boring.

Street Photography is a dangerous game to me. Not to be done only in historical centers. It is dangerous when I make this in unsafe neighborhoods. Sometimes in my head coming the crazy idea that while I am framing and pressing the shutter, my activity can attract the attention of some very bad person…but I continue to do my own thing, because this is street photography. I don’t ask permission, and I am looking for the comfortable zone.

After 10 years to make this, I don’t have enough yet.

It is my way of life.

I hate street photography and this is the reason I love it.

I have thought a lot about sharing my opinion about this happening.

The in public faida has become public knowledge by choice of direct protagonists. And this blog certainly counts street photography as a recurring theme. Furthermore I have to say that in public website was one of the few exisiting when I started to make street photos and all over the years I always considered the collective as one of the places where a martian should check out in order to receive the imprinting of what street photography is. 

With hindsight, I am not even that sure. This is because when you mature a certain experience and the tastes inevitably evolve you get aware there is not, never, a bible to follow. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to cancel all the merits that the site of the collective has at all, but  at the same time, I think they contributed to a certain idea of street photography, almost always based on hunting for the unicorn, of the absurd moment, or to say with words used by Nick Turpin, with a smile in the head. Of the same period, and one of the first collectives, before the big wave and the fashion of street photography, it is the Mignon collective from Padova and they, as Italians, have always favored a different taste and approach, more focused on classic reportage, linked to poetry and at the same time to documentary.

The ridiculous fact of these hours is not coming from the in public faida, but from those who, watchers,  have decided to stand up for one or the other, with a large majority in favor of Blake to tell the truth…It is so typical of these times, where unknown characters allow themselves to cut judgments on other photographers, or proposing rankings expressing only a kindergarten attitude.

I really don’t see the need to place me on one side or the other. First of all because the real actors in the game doesn’t care about what I think. And then because I think we should stop to be as supporters of football teams when it comes to photography. Photography is self expression, first of all. And the variables are very many and different. 

I would point on other aspects of the story: first of all, what is a collective? I am the founder of 2 collectives, noise, created in 2014 altogether with Michael Ernest Sweet, and since a year of la.strada. and I never imposed any particular guideline, especially on the photos to publish. Who am I to say what a photographer should publish? Also: I always thought that a collective shouldn’t be a trap for creativity and self expression. Any photographer in a collective is there to make his contribution, but the principle of autodetemination should never fail, because it dosn’t matter if the collective is moe documentay or more focused on an artistic inspiration: photographers are creative, and anyone has several periods, evolutions, changes of inspiration and approach.

We also should consider a fact: we can stay at a round table for a lifetime discussing about what is street photography and eveyone will have his own idea. This is the good and the bad of this genre, the good because street photography is essentially anarchism based on our own mindset and most of the time based on trespassing the rules. The bad because exactly for this reason there are contrasts and religious factions.

Blake Andrews in his open letter to Nick Turpin (the two opposing sides) has, in my opinion, his winning points when he argues:

“Every camera sees the world in its own way, and that way is often different from what the eye sees. I believed at the time and continue to believe that dissonance to be very exciting. It is, on some level, the root of why I photograph.”

I really hear that statement. We should also consider an important fact: Blake Andrews has been clear about how the photo was generated, but even if it had not been…what would have changed of the perception that one has?

The issue, should be another one. And this is just my opinion. Usually I’m not impressed by a technical aspect to the point of giving all the specific weight of the value of a photo. For my way of looking at and understanding a photograph, a fish eye lens is most of the time an issue because it calls too much attention to how the photo was made. Its form and lens distortions overwhelm the content. To the point it results distracting. Guess what? It is the same happening with the Blake Andrews photo. In my opinion I see a moment not very interesting,  showing nothing very important happening, and a technical error of the camera can’t give a value to a photo in my opinion. I am open mind with imperfections in a photograph, also due to a lens or a particular camera that generates a particular imbalance in the form, but it can’t be anything, if the content is missing. But I am sure also Blake Andrews doesn’t think we are in front of a great picture. It is pretty forgettable, indeed, if it were not for the chaos generated.

About the technical issue generated all this war, the in public wa, I would add that also black and white is a deformation of reality, and when we talk about reality in photography we should be aware that is impossible to think to a objective reality. Garry Winogrand stated: Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts. And I add that is the great thing of photography.

A photograph will be always an artifact, filtered or mediated, by the choices of the photographer, and of course the  technology used: if Bresson used another camera and lens the photos would be resulted different. If I would start to use the flash on the streets my photography would change drastically. It is a fact. An incontrovertible fact. 

To my eyes also the new picture of the month is deceptioning. With all the respect for Matt Stuart, that photo is in my opinion not very different from the average we see every single day in street photography groups. I am not surprised. Today street photography at best it is underexposed photos with black piece backgrounds, flash shots, ironic juxtapositions, color couplings and overlays of objects. It is the reason why perfect strangers, with very little visual culture, judge outdated Willy Ronis, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander or even Henri Cartier- Bresson and they raise nosense and dumb pictures to modernity.

This post doesn’t want to be judgmental, although it has already done it in some passages.

I would also highlight the absurd of the results who see outside the collective the founder Nick Turpin and Nils Jorgensen. The absurd is that street photography is not photojournalism, where a deontological and ethical code is required. The Magnum agency has never ousted Steve McCurry when he was caught several times to alter photographs heavily and also quite rough, by removing secondary elements but also whole foreground subjects. Where we expected greater rigor, nothing happened.

It is happened in a street photography collective, one of the historical ones too.

To document yourself about the story:

THE PHOBLOGRAPHER

NICK TURPIN ON BLAKKAMERA

OPEN LETTER BY BLAKE ANDREWS

OK, YOU CAN  THINK IS ANOTHER PROVOCATION BUT IT IS NOT

Have you tried to google “Street Photography Blog”?

I did it.

It is an infinite anthology of:

– What is (and what is not) street photography

– The best street photography blogs to follow

– The most influential street photographers of *year*

– What’s in the bag

– The best cameras for street photography

– The do’s and don’ts when it comes to street photography

And these formulas are repeated endlessly. There are many intelligent blogs where someone really digs deep about content, composition and able to give you food for thought useful for your inspiration as photographers. I believe that the first cause of this is due to the fact that few, very few have their own ideas and everything is derivative of disclosures of copying. But above all because few of these bloggers are really writers. Most are made up of people lent to writing for personal reasons of visibility, but they are not writers. 

So, if we google street photography and issues realated with this way to make photography, we find how in most cases these are items for idiots. But this is an issue which concerns a little bit everything, not only photography. The majority goes with the cheap. 

When I was in Italy this year, a lot of photographers attending my street photo walk said me that I surprised them, because my learning method was not focused on giving rules or a general system to make photos. The others in the past proposed a system, their method, and they dispensed it as a gospel, and that the students should have followed religiously. The most of those giving street photography workshops make it in that way, and the reason is pretty easy to understand: otherwise, if you have a group, you have to create a different system of teaching, personalized for any participant. This imposes a different kind of dedication. Something I do, and that others said I am crazy to do this, is that a workshop to be effective needs to include a real mentoring program, after the event day(s).

Today we can see how photographers attending a workshop with a certain photographer repeats his style. This is because the educator applied a unique system and not interested (or not able to) to stimulate the student to find his/her inner voice, creates a bad copy of himself. The issue with emulating other Street Photographers is that you will not find yourself as photographer. If we see the masters, they are masters because they were free thinkers and pioneers, able to show new perspectives and ideas.

The universal recipes are good for non-demanding people. We see a lot of copycats generated by the groups on facebook, creating a homogeneity of the proposal, shots that are repeated all the same non-stop that do not distinguish a photographer from the other. Very few (but there are) are able to express themselves, to show their inner voice and their own ideas. There is a fever to getting close, as if getting close is the solution to be a better photographer. Most of the time, overcoming the fear, the photos are boring, apart for the ones looking to photographyas a kind of gym for the braves. To make a great composition and to be able to find a story is another thing. Usually these approachs are backed by an idea that photography should always speak for itself, and the use of word and writing is ridiculed, but but do you know why? Because it would be sufficient to ask what they would say with a certain picture to throw away most of the photos. Because most of the time is just aesthetics. 

There are already a lot of people thinking street photographers are dumb. Certain behaviours and attitudes don’t help. To get always involved in the same useless speech, the same blogs, the same conformism is the main issue today. If you don’t think street photographes are dumb don’t act like an idiot. Don’t make a fake accout to troll other photographers, to make an example. Or thinking to what others do.

A recommendation good for anything is life: think with your head, not with the ones of others.

I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE WINNERS OF THE FIRST TSPN AWARD.

The jury panel composed by the authors of la.strada. voted:

THE WINNERS

1  MICHELE CIMINI

A classic street photo where the absurd element is the winning point. It is not a cas Joel Meyerowitz defined moments like this a GASP moment, where you can’t say what is happening but is really happening. The photo wins because of composition where we can see a great construction in framing, with the sense of depth, helped by the poles and the people in the distance.

2  MAYA RAHAMIM

How many times I talked about the importance of energy fo a street photo? In this one the photographer has been able to obtain a particular narrative tension with the subjects coming in front of us, where the angle of the camera achieved to obtain a particular, intense distorsion.

3  DAMIAN MILCZAREK

This is a funny picture. It reminds me of some classic photos realized by Richard Kalvar. Look at the expression of the girl. I love to see how a photographer is able to capture so much revealing humanity through a simple moment.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

TAKUMI SEKIGUSHI

JEFF CHANE MOUYE

GIEDO VAN DER ZWAN

MASSIMO DI TOSTO

SASCHA DUNOW

DANIEL ANHUT

LUCA CORVINO

SIMON TAY

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Let me say that I am happy of this first edition of the TSPN AWARD. Today we reward real street photography, so threatened by awards and contests pushing the fake and the staged. This awad is a little fish in the ocean but here you will find always real street photography rewarded, and we are petty far from logic of favoritism. Any judge hee voted in complete autonomy, with secret votes to avoid to influnce the others. 

Congratulations to all the participants. The 2019 edition changes the rules. It will be bigger and you can already submit you work:

TSPN AWARD 2019

The 2018 edition is concluded. The judges are busy to choose the winners that I will announce soon.

OCTOBER 2011. OCTOBER 2018.

A new gallery celebrates that fantastic personal experience:

LOS ANGELES

Stay tuned because despite 7 years and a lot of experience more, the work realized there attracts still attention. U really hope in future to back in California. I am sure I could make a great work.  In the meantime, these photographs want to express my love for the City of Angels.

ISSUE 45 ALREADY AVAILABLE

Street Photographer Notebook

A LOT OF PHOTOGRAPHERS ASKED ME TO PROPOSE AGAIN THIS SOLUTION

The online street photography workshops are a solution more in order to give an opportunity to  those who can’t reach me physically in Mexico or Italy, yet they want to take a workshop with me.

My street/documentary photography workshops are a chance to share my experience with street photographers around the world, and  thanks to skype technology we can break down geographical limits. Furthermore I speak three languages, so I can give the workshops in Italian, Spanish or English.

To get more info, please visit:

Online Street Photography Workshops

TIME HAS ARRIVED: THE JOKES ARE TERMINATED

Garry Winogrand is back.

In reality, at least for me, he never went away.

La revancha of STREET PHOTOGRAPHY, the real one, passes through the upcoming documentary about the most important and pure street photographer of the history.

My friend Tim Huynh provokes:

I feel to be the best “modern day” street photographer you need to find that sweet spot that captures a documentary style, like Garry Winogrand, along with Alex Webb that’s more fine art street style.

And I commented on his The Street Photography Bubble:

We did the binge with the street photography lived as a belonging to a tribe. Social networks have encouraged a tendency to seek approval, something deeply human, and the origin of the issues also for street photographers. We can see it with the winning photos of the SP festivals around the world, not anymore a surprise the kind of stuff (aesthetics) celebrated there. At the point people produces photos with the same approach, photos for the contests. I can see still photographers able to bring out one’s inner voice, but usually are not the ones screaming everyday, they are not the ones participating in any festivals and awards, they are not the ones hashtagging 10000 words, they are not the ones present in millions of street photo groups on facebook. I can see how the color matching and the “jokegraphy” of these times has 0 value for the future. Time, as always, will make justice of this. You write: “the classic documentary style will be the more popular way to go” I agree, so only photographers able to do it will last.

I repeated often: these photographs made for the contest are terribly boring, aiming only on aesthetics, without soul, based on too much perfection, to the point of being cold, and false. False not in a way they stage ( and yes many stage) but false in the sense that focused on a wow momentum, and then you forget them immediately, lost in the space lost in the space of all the visual noise. Some of these jokers did not last long, the time of a facebook group or a collective, someone just a few months, we don’t even remember some of them. METEORS. Some start to waver. The game of being a street photographer is knowing its saturation for the first time in years. Some attribute it to no longer finding stimuli. But we know the real reason. For the sake of the dead we avoid to go further on this speech.

Certain Photography simply put the cane facing itself, ready to shoot a shot directly into an exaggeratedly large mouth.

However, we are still here, like a few years ago…

IT IS ALREADY AVAILABLE THE ISSUE 44

83 pages of photography. In this issue I am pleased to present you the work of Pilar Silvestre and Massimo Di Tosto.

Get this issue and all the others:

Street Photographer Notebook

SABADO 20 DE OCTUBRE ESTARE IMPARTENDO ESTE WORKSHOP EN LA CIUDAD DE MEXICO

SPOTS LIMITADOS

Este género de fotografia se popularizó gracias a  fotógrafos como Joel Meyerowitz, Garry Winogrand y Lee Friedlander, con su trabajo en las calles de New York.

Es una forma muy espontanea de vivir la fotografia, gracias a la toma directa de encuentros casuales e incidentes que pueden pasar en lugares públicos. Sin embargo, exactamente debido a este enfoque, nos permite desarrollar un conocimiento de diferentes tecnicas que nos pemiten convertirnos en fotografos mas completos y listos para llevar a cabo de una manera rápida fotos que tengan contenido y de nivel artistico, capturando el momento decisivo.

Mi experiencia me hace decir que gracias a la fotografia de calle me convertí en fotógrafo profesional.

En este Taller trabajaremos directamente en las calles de la Ciudad de Mexico, donde yo estarè impartendo informacion y retroalimentacion sobe procesos y metodología así como enfoque y técnicas para su desarrollo.

Dirigido a:

Fotógrafos amateurs y experimentados con un buen manejo de cámara, que sean interesados en el aprendizaje de habilidades para la práctica de este género fotográfico, así como el desarrollo de una visión y estilo personal.

ESTE TALLER INCLUYE:

– LIBROS ELECTRONICOS “EL ARTE DE VER” Y “NOTES ON STREET PHOTOGRAPHY”;

– LECTURA PORTFOLIO Y RETROALIMENTACION ILIMITADA CONMIGO;

– OPORTUNIDAD DE PUBLICACION EN LA REVISTA “THE STREET PHOTOGRAPHER NOTEBOOK”;

– DIPLOMA;

SABADO 20 DE OCTUBRE 2018

TALLER DE STREET PHOTOGRAPHY CENTRO HISTORICO

COSTO workshop: 2000 MX$ – 90 EURO

Paga con paypal:

o con una trasferencia bancaria:

Pago: CUENTA BANORTE: CARMEN ESTELA SUBIA PACHECO NUMERO DE CUENTA

NUMBER 0234024449 KEY ACCOUNT 072 18000 2340244498

CONTACTO: alex@alexcoghe.com

UN NUOVO E-BOOK GRATIS PER CHI SEGUE IL NOSTRO COLLETTIVO, PER CHI AMA LA STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

PDF E-BOOK, 104 PAGINE, 73.9 MB

INSPIRATION? WE CAN BE INSPIRED BY ANYTHING.

The existences on the street intrigue me. Sometimes I make photographs of people, simply by how they occupy space in public places. The street is the  is the most incredible stage in which to find humanity, where I can observe and photographing little gestures and expressions,  is the most incredible stage in which to find humanity all those simple moments of poetry of everyday life.