Show Navigation
All Galleries
Add to Cart Download

Street Pictures (large edit)

406 images Created 26 Jun 2010

In this gallery of thematic coincidences and repetitions one follows carefully edited sequences of street incidents that use colour, circumstance and form as threads. They originate from the early 90s to the present and include the workman; dogs; faces; mannequins; backdrops; seasides; spillages.

Returning from aviation projects (Red Arrows, 2005) I have been drawn again into public places, spurred on after reports of farcical incidents when tourists were suspected of terrorist surveillance.

It's hugely exciting (and overwhelming) to venture from home and take street pictures. But while it is an exercise of unconstrained, spontaneous possibilities there can be no better examples of wasted days when walking pavements yields nothing but sore feet. People and landscapes are fickle and it's also easy to become paranoid at what one might miss simply by looking say, a few degrees to the left, mere feet from where the most magical moment has occurred.

While I prefer to seek the overly complex and complicated I tend to find the minimal and simple; the poignant and quietly incongruous. This isn't so much an annoyance as a surprise to me that I come home with twos and threes of people and objects rather than multiples. Outs become stock, laden with suggestive conceptual keywords: Worry; nerves; suspicion; tension; romance and oddity.

I would urge the viewer to see this gallery as a slideshow in full-screen mode and to watch until the end, where many of my favourite pictures have been deliberately placed. And if you care to help me edit this work, I will willingly send you an invite to rate the images within a lightbox.

A small edit of the Top 30 is here:
http://bit.ly/13sLIMX

Loading ()...

  • A businessman strides along a London street holding a banana whose shadow appears to be part of another man's penis (from a film original).
    banana_man01-15-01-1991.jpg
  • Striding across the picture in different directions, two office workers: A lady in a red coat whose head and identity is lost in shadow, and a man wearing a dark suit whose stride is purposeful and confident. A third person, another man, leans against a wall looking thoughtfully into the distance. There is more shadow than highlight in this scene taken at Broadgate, a private estate of financial institutions and global businesses in the heart of the City of London. There are no spring leaves on the trees whose shadows are falling on an opposite wall. The headless lady looks sinister minus her face and there is tension in this image of linear and diagonal space. The City of London has a resident population of under 10,000 but a daily working population of 311,000. The City of London is a geographically-small City within Greater London, England. The City as it is known, is the historic core of London from which, along with Westminster, the modern conurbation grew. The City's boundaries have remained constant since the Middle Ages but  it is now only a tiny part of Greater London. The City of London is a major financial centre, often referred to as just the City or as the Square Mile, as it is approximately one square mile (2.6 km) in area. London Bridge's history stretches back to the first crossing over Roman Londinium, close to this site and subsequent wooden and stone bridges have helped modern London become a financial success.
    RB-0129.jpg
  • The lower legs of two boys playing basketball, partially intersected by a poster of a crowd - in a south London park.
    hilly_fields01-08-11-2015.jpg
  • As a red London bus passes-by, a pair of legs walk past an American Stars and Stripes flag bandana lying on the wet pavement in the City of London, the UK capital's financial district, on 17th August 2020, in the City of London, England.
    US_bandana08-17-08-2020.jpg
  • The lower limbs of a model appears on a small section of a large billboard during the renovation of a Versace outlet, at a pedestrian crossing on New Bond Street, on 26th May 2020, in London, England.
    coronavirus_west_end-27-26-05-2020.jpg
  • Woman's legs and arm with construction hoarding, a part of the forthcoming fashion label, Valentino Garavani's new shop in New Bond Street, central London.
    street_legs02-21-05-2015.jpg
  • An ice cream seller adjusts a cones dispenser near a Vodafone poster.
    oxford_street04-02-09-2015.jpg
  • Man and woman chat in the street using hand gestures, a theme echoed in an Yves Saint Laurent fragrance ad.
    city_people17-10-09-2015.jpg
  • Londoners walk past the sculpture entitled City Wing on Threadneedle Street in the City of London, the capital's financial district, on 24th July 2018, in London, England. City Wing is by the artist Christopher Le Brun. The ten-metre-tall bronze sculpture is by President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Christopher Le Brun, commissioned by Hammerson in 2009. It is called ‘The City Wing’ and has been cast by Morris Singer Art Founders, reputedly the oldest fine art foundry in the world.
    city_people-34-24-07-2018.jpg
  • A family shift house sofa furniture in an alleyway during their move from a home in Lisbon's Bairro Alto quarter...Bairro Alto quarter is located above Baixa and developed in the 16th Century. Suffering very little damage in the earthquake of 1755, it remains the area of most character and renowned for its residential and working quarter for craftsmen and shopkeepers. At night, life takes on a diferent personality when bars and up until the 60s, prostitution gave the district a bad reputation in the past but nowadays tourists and the chic frequent its streets and traditional 'Fado' (classical Portuguese opera) bars.  ...
    lisbon_street01-20-03-1994.jpg
  • A rear view of a man eating his lunch with his orange tie laying over his shoulder and down his back, at the Strand West End branch of Sushi restaurant, ITSU, on 28th September 2020, in London, England.
    orange_tie01-28-09-2020.jpg
  • A classically-dressed English gentleman walks past the temporary renovation hoarding of luxury brand Louis Vuitton in New Bond Street, on 27th February 2019, in London, England.
    vuitton_corner-04-27-02-2019.jpg
  • We see four office workers silhouetted against the large orange wall of the Credit Lyonnais Bank at Broadgate in the City of London, UK. Several figures who are also reduced to black shapes and without detail that may identify them or their clothes, are hurrying in different directions, carrying a bag or briefcase but the feeling of rushing business is seen and their scale is ambiguous becase we don't know how close or far away they are from each other. This is due to telephoto lens forshortening. Some therefore look giants and some appear tiny. Broadgate Estate is a large, 32 acre (129,000 m²) office and retail estate in the City of London, owned by British Land and managed by Broadgate Estates. It was originally built by Rosehaugh and was the largest office development in London until the arrival of Canary Wharf in the early 1990s..
    four_silhouettes01-18-05-1995.jpg
  • A Big Issue seller spreads out a blanket for her pet dog on pavement outside clothing shop Hobbs in central London.
    sale_bigissue03-20-01-2011.jpg
  • A passer-by walks through narrow winter sunshine street past a tuxedo suit rental shop in Fleet Street, City of London.
    tuxedo_window02-19-11-2010.jpg
  • WTC stencils, Manhattan. Patriotic Americana - After 9/11.Pedestrian shadows pass an aerosol World trade Center stencil. In the week after the September 11th attacks, America sought to express their anger and patriotic unity. .Near New York City?s Armory, where relatives of the victims reported with DNA samples, a stencilled ?rest in peace? message has been sprayed onto the pavement for New Yorkers to walk over while paying their respects to the missing thousands whose pictures adorn the neighbouring walls. "We're gonna get busy!" - From the Jay Leno TV show...
    These Colors Dont Run05 RBA.jpg
  • An female acrobat spontaneously stands on the shoulders of a friend at a coffee kiosk, on 2nd March 2017, in The Cut, London borough of Southwark, England.
    southwark_acrobats-03-02-03-2017.jpg
  • A young ballerina dancer adopts a position in front of the fountains of Trafalgar Square, on 13th August 2018, in London, England.
    trafalgar_square-06-13-08-2018.jpg
  • A 1990s Cote d'Azur skater performs a high stunt leap in front of a crowd of admirers on the Promenade de Anglais, on 10th May 1996, in Nice, France. (Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images)
    cote_dazur03-10-05-1996.jpg
  • A contractor hangs from the roof to position a banner for a new exhibition of the artist Kader Attia, of the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank, on 7th May 2019, in London, England. Kadar Attia works, "In sculptures, installations, collages, videos and photographs that move ‘back and forth between politics and poetry’, Attia inventively explores the ways in which colonialism continues to shape how Western societies."
    bus_journey-05-07-05-2019.jpg
  • Seen through a window, a lady stretches to echo an image of a man hanging from bars, outside a Fitness First gym, on 1st September 2016, in south London, England UK.
    city_people-04-01-09-2016.jpg
  • A devoted young girl holds the hand of a Jesus statue in the foyer of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in central London, England.
    jesus_girl-03-30-10-2016.jpg
  • As activists with Extinction Rebellion protest about climate change in a blocked-off Oxford Circus a newspaper vendor sings to the DJ's music, on 17th April 2019, in London, England.
    extinction_rebellion-40-17-04-2019.jpg
  • Smoking employees enjoy cigarettes and autumn sunshine <br />
in Leadenhall Street, on 12th September, in the City of London, UK.
    city_people-10-12-09-2016.jpg
  • Pointing up to a tall new building with geometric angles and diagonal lines on new architecture at Southwark SE1, on 7th September 2018, in London, England
    one_blackfriars-14-07-09-2018.jpg
Next
View: 25 | All
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
x

Richard Baker Photography

  • Archive
    • All Galleries
    • Search
    • Cart
    • Lightbox
    • Client Area
  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Contact
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Blog