About “Perfect Strangers”, a street photography book by Melissa O’Shaughnessy

Melis­sa O’Shaugh­nessy is no stranger to the street pho­tog­ra­phy com­mu­ni­ty, she is a mem­ber of UP Pho­tog­ra­phers, is fea­tured in the street pho­tog­ra­phy bible “Bystander: A His­to­ry of Street Pho­tog­ra­phy” with two won­der­ful pho­tos, and most recent­ly in the anthol­o­gy “Women Street Pho­tog­ra­phers” edit­ed by Gul­nara Samoilo­va and pub­lished by Pres­tel. It was about time she pub­lished her first mono­graph, which Aper­ture thank­ful­ly took on in 2020 with “Per­fect Strangers — New York City Street Pho­tographs”.

In recent years it has become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to me that pho­to books also con­tain inter­est­ing texts that sort the artist’s work, and so thank­ful­ly Joel Meyerowitz wrote the fore­word for “Per­fect Strangers”. “O’Shaugh­nessy takes us along on her dai­ly rounds look­ing at con­tem­po­rary life in New York City. What she selects is hers alone, yet the con­sis­ten­cy of her attrac­tion to cer­tain moments of time and the peo­ple caught in them, and her curi­ous and quirky ren­der­ing of these moments, present us with a time cap­sule of the now,” writes Meyerowitz. And fur­ther: “We see her present tense, her read­ing of mean­ing, her judg­ment of what might be of impor­tance to read­ers of his­to­ry a hun­dred years from now — just as we see Lartigue’s works today — when the present tense is tru­ly the past. ” Meyerowitz is right about that.

“Per­fect Strangers” excels in break­ing through a lim­it­ed num­ber of visu­al ideas. This gives the book a pleas­ant coher­ence. There are, for exam­ple, sev­er­al exam­ples of “image sym­me­try”, “cou­ples” that deter­mine the image: two girls in bal­let dress­es, two red­heads, the suit man stand­ing back to back with him­self. Anoth­er genre of street pho­tog­ra­phy that O’Shaugh­nessy exer­cis­es I want to call the “hid­den object”. Wino­grand was per­haps one of the pio­neers of this genre, lat­er Richard Bram: pic­tures in which there is a lot going on, in which the gaze has to wan­der, on sev­er­al lev­els, from front to back, from back to front — and there is so much hid­den and so much to dis­cov­er. I would call the next group of pic­tures “frames” or “win­dows”: the young woman with flow­ing hair in a mir­ror, the woman in the jew­el­ry shop win­dow, the man in the yel­low revolv­ing door. Images that work with the ges­tures and facial expres­sions of those depict­ed: the Ortho­dox Jews con­vers­ing, the chil­dren scratch­ing their hands eat­ing apples, show­ing peo­ple. There are the images that work with writ­ing with­in the image — “Birth­day Boy”, “Fuck Fur”, “Biggest Los­er”, “Stay True” for exam­ple.

All pic­tures in the book were tak­en dur­ing the day, many of them are in the sun. They are radi­ant, most­ly depict­ing a very friend­ly, live­ly New York (pre­sump­tions that the book title could be bor­rowed from Deep Purple’s “Per­fect Strangers” are mis­lead­ing, we don’t see any rough pave­ment here). Con­nec­tions to dark­er times are only hint­ed at in a few images: “Ter­ror returns to NYC” can be read at some point in a New York Post lying around on the floor. Oth­er­wise, I tend to dis­cov­er joie de vivre, “Seek­ing human kind­ness” is writ­ten with smi­leys on a box in the pic­ture, maybe some­thing like a mot­to of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er on her for­ays through New York. Some­how you think you can read a cer­tain care­free light­ness of the time of ori­gin in the pic­tures and in the pho­to­graph­ic hand­writ­ing — the pic­tures were tak­en between 2014 and 2019; in a time before the cri­sis years of the Coro­na peri­od on the one hand — and on the oth­er hand more than a decade after the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

It’s up to me to pick my favorite pic­ture from the book. I hes­i­tate between some of the hid­den object pic­tures and the cov­er pho­to, but then decide on one of the pic­tures that works par­tic­u­lar­ly well with the facial expres­sions of the pro­tag­o­nist: 42nd Street, 2017 it’s titled. A young woman with flow­ing hair, wear­ing a dark sum­mer dress, hold­ing her mobile phone and lis­ten­ing to music or a pod­cast. In the shad­ed back­ground, the sun­lit glass win­dows from oppo­site are reflect­ed on a house wall. And the young woman seems to have just stepped out of the shade into the sun. She frowns very con­spic­u­ous­ly and now I’m torn between whether she’s frown­ing because the sun is sud­den­ly blind­ing her or whether what she’s hear­ing on the cell phone is mak­ing her frown.

By the way: As I write this book review, parts of the world of pho­tog­ra­phers and artists are in an uproar about whether arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence should, or should­n’t be allowed to pro­duce pho­tographs, art, images. I think that’s large­ly based on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how art and pho­tog­ra­phy works. At the begin­ning there are artists, with their biogra­phies, expe­ri­ences, adven­tures, thoughts, philoso­phies, wor­ries, prob­lems, hopes, their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with art, with nature, with life, with the future, with the past. And so on. And these artists cre­ate works of art that are close­ly relat­ed to these bio­graph­i­cal aspects. The work of art then stands in a chain between the artist and the recip­i­ent. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence does not have such a biog­ra­phy. It has no rela­tion to the world. And that’s exact­ly what char­ac­ter­izes Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy’s series – and those of many oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers and artists – to get the bow back to street pho­tog­ra­phy: their con­nec­tion to life, their pro­cess­ing of the world, in this par­tic­u­lar case the con­nec­tion of Melis­sa O’Shaugh­nessy to life in New York, to street life, to her encoun­ters, to her obser­va­tions on the street. Every sin­gle pic­ture – and espe­cial­ly the mas­ter­ly assem­bled sequence of pic­tures in the book – tells a lit­tle sto­ry, a lit­tle anec­dote, a lit­tle scene from the life of New York­ers, about the present or about the time in which they were cre­at­ed.

If you are inter­est­ed in O’Shaughnessy’s pic­tures, you have to hur­ry, Aper­ture has already indi­cat­ed on its web­site that the book could be sold out. Or one hopes for a sec­ond edi­tion.

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy
Per­fect Strangers: New York City Street Pho­tographs
With an intro­duc­tion by Joel Meyerowitz
Pub­lish­er: Aper­ture
For­mat: Hard­back
Num­ber of pages: 144
Num­ber of images: 91
Pub­li­ca­tion date: 2020-10-27
Mea­sure­ments: 11.5 x 9.75 x 0.8 inch­es
ISBN: 9781597114752
https://aperture.org/books/perfect-strangers-new-york-city-street-photographs/

Thank­ful­ly, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask Melis­sa O’Shaugh­nessy a few ques­tions about her work and her won­der­ful book:

A visu­al zine:  I think the qual­i­ty of a street pho­tog­ra­phy series often has to do some­thing with some auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, some per­son­al, some indi­vid­ual aspects we dis­cov­er in the work of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. How much “Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy” is in your Per­fect Strangers series?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: I believe there is no small degree of auto­bi­og­ra­phy to be found in every photographer’s pho­tographs. Because street pho­tog­ra­phy is entire­ly reliant on chance, the per­son­al and auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal stamp can be more dif­fi­cult to dis­cern. But look close­ly enough and I hope you’ll find “me” in my pic­tures. Above all I hope my inter­est in — and love of — New York City and its peo­ple comes through clear­ly. Edit­ing my work for the book was also an impor­tant exer­cise in hon­ing what (I hope) comes through as my per­son­al voice.

A visu­al zine: The last time I was in New York was 2014, and I always had the impres­sion that this could have been some­how a lucky, care­free time for New York: crime rates were low, 9/11 was more than a decade ago, it was pre-Trump and pre-Covid. I had the impres­sion that every­where in New York peo­ple were danc­ing, in the parks, at the Hud­son Riv­er Piers etc. Do you agree with that obser­va­tion – as I some­how see this in your pho­tos too. And what do you think your pho­tos are telling about the city and about the time you made the pho­tos?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: The city has most cer­tain­ly changed since I made the work in “Per­fect Strangers” (tak­en in a 6‑year span from 2014 to 2019). Not only does it feel less care-free (though NYC has nev­er real­ly felt like a “care-free” city to me), the mix of peo­ple feels dif­fer­ent as well. There cer­tain­ly are few­er com­muters, whose rush to and from the trains leant a won­der­ful ener­gy to mid-town and Low­er Man­hat­tan on week­day morn­ings and after­noons. It’s hard to put a fin­ger on it, but until recent­ly peo­ple on the street did seem more tense and wary in the past cou­ple of years. In the past few months I’ve felt like the city is final­ly get­ting some of its pre-pan­dem­ic mojo back. 

A visu­al zine: Could you tell me some­thing about the con­di­tions, about the rou­tines you had while pro­duc­ing your street pho­tographs? Did you usu­al­ly go out into the streets with the aim to take pho­tos, or did you include it into your dai­ly rou­tines?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: I am only able to get out to shoot a cou­ple days a week. But when I do go out, I tend to spend the entire day pho­tograph­ing. I typ­i­cal­ly will start the day in Low­er Man­hat­tan and work my way north, a good strat­e­gy for keep­ing the sun at my back. I’ll go out in any weath­er, since my many per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments often dic­tate what days I can get out to pho­to­graph. It is not unusu­al for me to walk 10 – 15 miles a day when I’m out shoot­ing and I rarely tire until the light is gone — I find street pho­tog­ra­phy extreme­ly ener­giz­ing.

A visu­al zine: For me it is inter­est­ing that I didn’t find one night pho­to nei­ther in the book nor on your web­site. What’s the rea­son for that? And could I pos­si­bly expect to see some night pho­tos from you in future? Because maybe I’d love to see some.

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: You’re right, I rarely shoot at night. The sim­ple answer is that I’m a very ear­ly ris­er — and after the afore­men­tioned 10 – 15 miles of day­time walk­ing I’m just too tired to go back out after the sun goes down!

A visu­al zine: Are you work­ing on oth­er gen­res than street pho­tog­ra­phy? Maybe any oth­er doc­u­men­tary series?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: I’ve always shot land­scapes and nature, my fam­i­ly, architecture…anything and every­thing real­ly. I’ve just not shown any of that work to date; but it’s prob­a­bly time for an archive dive, now that you men­tion it.

A visu­al zine: To what extent was the book and the series devel­oped in terms of edit­ing, when you approached Aper­ture? And: I’ve seen that Aper­ture marked the book as “out of stock” already: Do we expect to have a sec­ond edi­tion of it?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: Aper­ture actu­al­ly approached me about doing the book; unbe­knownst to them at the time I actu­al­ly had a book dum­my in the works, so the tim­ing was for­tu­itous. “Per­fect Strangers” is quite a dif­fer­ent book than my ini­tial edit in the dum­my, in no small part due to my fan­tas­tic edi­tors there. 

On the one hand I’m delight­ed that the book has sold out, but on the oth­er hand am not sure if there is enough demand for a sec­ond print­ing. I think copies can still be found from third-par­ty sell­ers for a not unrea­son­able mark up, and Aper­ture still has a few signed copies avail­able on their web­site.

A visu­al zine: And one addi­tion­al ques­tion, as my sev­en years old son came home from school, while I was going through your book. He was very inter­est­ed in it, and he said that he liked most­ly the girl run­ning in the shad­ows (page 10) – and all the pho­tos with dogs, espe­cial­ly that from page 90. And he asked me to ask you, if you remem­ber where you were com­ing from and where you were going to, when you took that pho­to?

Melis­sa O’Shaughnessy: I love that your son respond­ed to that pho­to of the run­ning girl — she looks like she could be about 7‑years-old her­self! It was tak­en in the late after­noon at the Gen­er­al Motors build­ing on 5th Avenue and 58th Street. I had plant­ed myself there because I found the rak­ing shad­ows and after­noon light beau­ti­ful, and then that young girl came sprint­ing into the frame — I’m glad I caught her and her youth­ful exu­ber­ance.

The pho­to of the dog on page 91 was tak­en just steps out­side of my apart­ment in Union Square, proof pos­i­tive that many (hap­py) acci­dents hap­pen close to home. 

A visu­al zine: Thanks a lot, Melis­sa!