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My love for street photography was established when I was first

introduced to photography at age 10. Since beginning my photography

career in 2009, my inclination has been towards candid, in the moment portraits. When I had the opportunity to study abroad in Lacoste, France this summer, my aesthetic was further drawn out, aligned with, and

defined through street photography.

I want my viewers to feel about my work the way I felt

about Melodie McDaniel’s black and white images in my

favorite movie “Love Jones”: intrigued. Candid shots of people interacting

within their natural environments and even environments oddly juxtaposed

with the people photographed gives me a chance to be in that moment with them, vicariously. I have always been an observer, and being able to freeze

a moment I want to revisit, re-question for understanding’s sake, or for

nostalgia’s sake allows me to try to perceive life from my subject’s point of view.

It allows for a chance to humanize what some might condemn. The viewer

is compelled to open up to the subject of the image, be it a man without

a conventional home, asleep on a bench in a fast-paced city, or a breakdancer

making his art vulnerable to an audience. The emotions I want to evoke are best,

but not exclusively, communicated through black and white images,

granting me the opportunity to write my poetry

in the form of street photography.

 

                                                                          -Marsha N. Wilson