1980s NYC and the Intuition of Richard Sandler

“Street photography is very difficult. The number of really good pictures that you get is very small in comparison to the number of pictures taken. You’re better off, I think, letting your intuition completely run wild…”

– Richard Sandler on his photographs of NYC 

 

Richard Sandler was taking photographs of life on the streets of New York City from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. In these, portraits from 1980s Manhattan, we see depth in fleeting moments.

 

 

Street photography is very difficult. The number of really good pictures that you get is very small in comparison to the number of pictures taken. You’re better off, I think, letting your intuition completely run wild… and even when you find yourself in a situation where the subject matter is really interesting, it is still hard to make a good picture, because how you put that subject matter into the frame is a huge issue. Also, people are moving and things are moving, so it’s a lot to orchestrate… that’s why i say that street photography is the perfect medium for obeying your intuition. It’s very much like meditation, in the sense that you’re in the moment and responding to it. Personally, I try to eliminate extraneous thoughts when i’m shooting. At worst it’s a wonderful psychological and diaristic exercise… at best you get a compelling image. When you don’t get good pictures at least you have the experience of having being ‘in the moment’ all day long, and that’s a very good thing… and it’s like any art form: it focuses you.”

– Richard Sandler

 

“Life in New York City means being on the subway, and that is the great humanist beauty of living in New York. All those faces, each unique, and many unguarded. Each subway car is a cast of different characters. You don’t know whether it’s day or night; you can only guess by how people are dressed or the amount of people there are. It feels like a collective consciousness. A continuous parallel underground reality.”

– Richard Sander

 

 

 

 

Subway Swoon, NYC, 1986 – above:

‘The couple in the middle of the frame are having an intimate moment, and her eyes, and perhaps his, appear to be closed, making the moment feel all the more romantic. But the reality was that, as the train was pulling out of the station, it kicked up a lot of dust, and that’s why their eyes are closed”

 

 

“I am a hardcore street documentarian and my path was, and is, to “take the pulse” of the city and offer something of a diagnosis in pictures”

– Richard Sandler

 

 

Subway Kiss, NYC, 1987 above:

‘This photograph was extremely lucky: I boarded the train in the middle of the carriage, then I walked to the end of the car where I saw the couple about to kiss on the platform and the two guys with shades in the foreground. I made two pictures with the doors open. Then the doors closed, and to my amazement the glass was cracked exactly where the kissing couple’s faces lined up. I knew that was the best picture of the three frames. Sometimes the photo gods throw you a bone and you make a picture that becomes an instant metaphor”

 

 

Via; Bronx Documentary Center