Alex Webb

One of the street photographers who have had a strong impact on my street photography is Alex Webb. Webb is a Magnum photographer who uses strong colors, light, and emotion to capture beautifully complex images. After picking up a copy of Alex Webb’s “The Suffering of Light” I fell in love with his work and his use of color- and started to also make the transition from black and white to color.

Depth is a strong element in the work of Alex Webb. In many of his photographs, they have a strong foreground, mid-ground, and background. The great thing about this is that it leads you (the viewer) to invite yourself into the frame. You see what he sees. You enter the frame by looking at the things closest to you, and then you slowly make your way into the mid-ground, and then slowly out into the background.

From a recent interview he talks about the quote:

“My understanding – of course, I’m not a philosopher or a scientist – of an aspect of Goethe’s theory of color is that he felt that color came out of tension between light and dark. I think that is very appropriate when you think about the kind of color that I shoot.” – Alex Webb

He often describes when he is shooting in places- he looks for the tension between borders. For example, he found Istanbul a fascinating place because geographically- it is located as a hub for many different cultures. It is a melting pot in terms of socio-economic, political, and ethnic terms. He says about Istanbul, “I returned frequently between 2001 and 2005 to complete a book on this vibrant and melancholy city that sits between the divide between the East and west: Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names”.