Charles Traub’s talk titled, “The Sweet Way,” focused on his photography of the real world. Of the multiple projects of his that Traub’s introduced us to, I wanted to focus on Lunchtime, a collection of his street portraits taken in cities. To me, one of the most fascinating things about this project was that he took all of the portraits at lunchtime break. And while it was a similar time each day, each portrait captures something different.
Traub also explained the difference between his images, which he calls street portraits, and snapshots. While a street portrait has a greater connection between subject and taker, a snapshot can only provide “the likeness of the certain moment,” as Traub phrases it. I can’t definitely say what it is, but I do see the extra life that Traub’s portraits seems to contain. There a vibrancy in them that doesn’t just come from the colors of the photo, but also the person in it, and the person behind the camera.
While the camera I have with me is the one on my phone, I wonder what I could do during lunch time other than eating.