 When talking about colour photography from back in the day, Alex Webb doesn't seem to get the same recognition at least in some circles as the likes of Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas, Fred Hertzog, and of course the ever divisive William Eggleston. Perhaps it's because he's drawn to locations that aren't quite as hip as a 1950s New York street scene, or that he's photographed with their inky black shadows where one can lose themselves. Invite questions that aren't easily answered in a quick fire response on a forum. For almost 40 years, Alex Webb has been creating vibrant colour photographs of sometimes enigmatic and serendipitous moments in places that are at once both familiar and yet alien to Western eyes. Part street photography, part phone journalism and with a dash of fine art. If you're not familiar with the photography of Alex Webb, this monograph, The Suffering of Light, is an excellent overview of the first three decades of a photographer whose images are both complex and rewarding. How's it, how's it? Alex Webb started his career in the mid-1970s and by 22, he was already a magnum non-Ami. Now despite being evidently well thought of by the likes of Magnum at the time, Webb himself didn't really feel that his photography was going anywhere quickly. He strongly felt this pull of travel. He wanted to get away from New England and as far as possible with where he was from. He started taking trips to Mississippi, the US-Mexico border and to Haiti. This change in location and seemingly was the shot in the arm that the young Webb needed for his photography. At this time, he was still photographing predominantly in black and white but slowly, slowly a sense of colour was beginning to develop and is what Alex calls an emotional response to the places that he was working in. It was in Haiti in 1979 that Webb says that the penny dropped for him and he finally started to see in colour. The first thing that springs to mind when I look at these photographs is that they feel more kind of real and earthy than somebody say like Fred Herzog for example but at the same time they don't feel real. They feel almost unreal and this is an idea that I'll get to in a moment. They do make me feel like I'm viewing something that's genuine. You know they have a foreground, a middle distance and a background just like my own vision does when I look at the world with my own two eyes. Now neither body of work, both Webb's or Herzog is contrived but I feel with Webb's photography I feel like I'm an active participant in the image rather than just a static observer. The scenes draw me in, they wrap around my consciousness with their trademark shadows and the frames within frames within frames. At its most basic framing is the concept of taking a frame within a frame so this this roundel within the bridge is is framing the surfer and of course because of the iron work there it almost looks like a gun sight which I really love the idea of so that's it in a very basic level and we could all of us do do that in some way in our photography and like a lot of these concepts is exceptionally simple the idea is simple but execution is everything and it really helps to go from practice and develop an eye for these things. It's wonderful to have an example of a photographer who talks about his process honestly and and it's one that I'm sure a lot of us can hopefully you know relate to. He says that he simply wanders with his camera to allow that camera and his experiences to lead him where they will. I only know how to approach a place by walking for what does the street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk and then watch and wait some more trying to remain confident that the unexpected the unknown or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner. This seems to explain his ability to capture those moments because it becomes about being alert to his instincts. Quite often when people ask well-known photographers how they work and what they look for the answer is somewhat of a letdown it's not something like a rule or a quantifiable system it's a feeling it's a gut reaction or it's a vibe. Quite often the answer is I don't really know what I'm looking to photograph until I see it. Throughout Webb's photography you can feel and sense this idea of instinct leading him while each image feels carefully composed and thoroughly thought through they have this kind of reactionary feel to them the occasional blurred figure how a scene feels like it was just sensed out of the corner of our eye and we wheeled around to try and catch it that world that exists at once both next to us and behind us but that we can never really see fully with our own eyes. I hope that if you draw anything from looking at these photographs irrespective of whether you're aware of Alex Webb's photography or not that you appreciate how important that little voice inside all of us can be the little nudges and hints our instinct give us that you don't have to be a supremely talented photographer or have decades of experience you simply have to occasionally follow Obi-Wan's advice to let go and trust your feelings there's a technique in Alex Webb's photograph that is reasonably easy to understand the basics of but it's very difficult to master and once you've kind of sort of see it it's going to help you enjoy these photographs and and other people who use this technique in a far deeper way and talking about layering and framing that's not a massively hardcore technique and and there's one that most people can use in one form or another basically layering means you take the foreground the middle ground and the background and have them all work together to tell a more involved story if you think about it like a Wes Anderson thing there are there are horizontal planes that move away from you if you have something in each of those planes telling its own story when you put them all together in the same frame it makes the whole thing feel more alive and interconnected it gives it a real sort of depth layering is a fantastic way of really bringing an image to life and and this is a great example that that i'm very fond of we have the foreground here these two kids sort of dominating the foreground here they're slightly out of focus and then in the middle ground we have these three figures here this kind of guy's sort of in between ever so slightly of course then there's the the guys in the background now each telling their own individual little stories here at the front these two kids maybe they're siblings or something but maybe you know this guy sort of said look the photographer's trying to take some pictures you know get get out the way get out the way and you know this guy's obviously quite interested and the way sort of connects to the background is or the middle ground is that you have these guys here who are quite clearly interacting with with what's going on here and this this guy's looking at at Alex Webaz as this gentleman here on the edge of the frame so if we if we sort of chop all of that out there's still some interest going on here as is there is there but when you bring the two together it just makes a bit more sort of story coming through and of course then you have these guys in the background who are not really paying attention they're not involved in the story at all but one of the things that I really like and it's most likely just completely serendipitous is but there is a limb here which I'm not sure if you can see particularly well but here in the book it's going to I'll put a bigger version of this up on screen this limb here echoes this arm here so it's like they're both pushing something away and and I really like that because it sort of brings the whole thing almost full circle that's sort of coming around and that there's a really good example of layering sounds like a lot of theory and stuff and I don't really want to use the word theory because it sounds like a boring you know sort of textbook talk and and it's always best I think with these sort of things to look at visual examples and if you are looking for more I don't think you can do much better than Alex Web when you boil it down it's helpful to remember that street photography is most about failure you know Alex himself he said it's 99% failure and success however you want to define it can be a mysterious and exploratory eye concept Alex Web doesn't claim to know why he happened to have his camera to his eye the very moment a young boy jumped off of a wall in a little Mexican border town why he happened to turn a certain corner and walk into a particular barbershop in Istanbul what I particularly enjoy about Alex Web's photography and the way that he uses color is the way that he pairs color with shadow not only do these shadows help to intensify the colors within the frame they bet they are also creating spaces where we are sort of left to fill in our own parts of the stories much like in the images of Desiree Dolrin there are swathes of dark where the unknown images and things can dwell it's arresting to see the world like Alex Web photographs it at once both so familiar and yet not really how we experience it with our own eyes to be confident enough to purposefully hide things from us in those shadows and almost ascent our senses with the color both real and imagined of his world if you're interested in discovering more photographers and seeing how they can make you feel I'll link to a playlist that I've created for you at the end of this video Alex Web is an extremely prolific photographer and he's published 17 monographs now this is great but it does mean that it's hard to know like you know where to start if you're looking to to buy some of his books and I often fall back into music mode when I discover a new photographer who has an extensive back catalog and go for something that's the greatest hits first unlike in the music world it's quite difficult with photographers monographs especially the earlier work or their lesser known work because they go out of print and then they cost a fair bit to invest in to seeking out books like the suffering of light which give an extremely wonderful introduction to a photographer's body of work is a great way to expand the scope of your library without jumping too heavily into a particular photographer discovering new photographers is one of the greatest pleasures I put a playlist up on screen for you right now that has some photographers in there whom I'm sure are going to excite you go and check it out thanks ever so much for joining me here today and I look forward to seeing you again soon