I thought looking at Charles Traub’s Lunchtime collection was interesting because the people on the streets in the 1970s and 1980s do not look all that different from the people on the streets today. Although the clothing and hairstyles captured in the photographs dated them to an extent, some of the people would not look out of place in 2015. I think it would be interesting to see a similar project done today to compare people then and now. How much of the human nature in the street portraits that Traub captured is still present?
Traub lamented that a project like the Lunchtime series would be impossible today because people are more wary of having their picture taken and people have lost their style. I think that being on the streets of a city at lunchtime is probably very different now than it was a few decades ago because people have become absorbed by their technology, which has also changed the way people take and share photographs. There might be some people who would not like to be photographed because instead of ending up on someone’s roll of film, their face could end up on a public website in a matter of seconds. The available technology has probably made it both harder and easier to complete a street portrait project.