Projections & Speech for I ♥ Street Photo

The projections at Trafalgar, Leicester and Hoxton squares went exactly according to our plans, as was the evening at The Book Club.  Apart from some curious police towards the end, no one gave us any trouble.  The projection crew met up at Trafalgar Square close to sunset, and we set up right in front of The National Gallery.

Our street photography was projected onto white canvasses held up.

We then headed over to Leicester Square.

Some of you who weren’t able to make it to The Book Club have asked about the speech, so I’m including a transcript below.  Many thanks to everyone who came.  Clause 43 was dropped because of support like yours.  Hopefully they’ll revise these ICO guidelines in the near future.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Steve Gong, and on behalf of So Shoot Me, I thank you for joining us tonight on this very special event: I Love Street Photo.

I hope you have had the chance to see the hugely successful “human light show” demonstration/exhibition that we’ve been putting on in the past few hours on Trafalgar square, Leicester and Hoxton squares.

As you are all aware, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to take pictures, especially street photography.// and thinking about how far we’ve come as a species, I remembered a concept from my days when I was doing Biology.

It’s a concept in Genetics and Evolution, known as Dual Inheritance, which states that at some point during the evolution of the human species, we gained the capacity to store and transmit culture//  And really, that is what set us apart from other forms of life…And that was really brought on by having a written record// for suddenly, we could transmit information not just to our immediate contacts, but to entire future generations.

And then, another revolutionary thing happened, with the birth of photography, in particular, Street Photography, as Street Photography provides in-the-moment social documentary, photos that are unscripted, unposed or set up.  Capturing forever changing fashion trends, hairstyles, automobiles, and buildings // it’s a record for future generations.

What the government wants to do is to take that away.  This would be akin to setting humankind back to a more primitive state in our cultural evolution – a time when there were no visual records for future generations.  To ban street photography is to ban our sentience, our emotions, our accomplishments. It would be to ban what it means to be human.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I refuse to have some petty law govern my photographic practice.  So no matter what ridiculous laws they decide to bring out, I hope that you will all continue with what we’ve started// Continue with Street Photography…whether-or-not that means going head to head with authority, or circumventing the law.

So continue shooting, everyone, and to quote our mentor John Easterby from our brief for the Street Photography assignment:  “take to the streets, and put in the miles.”