Kate Kirkwood - rural "street" photography

bartjeej

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I see she's been mentioned twice here in the early days of this forum, but never in a thread dedicated to her work.

Today I was wondering what nature photography by Saul Leiter would look like, so obviously I googled it. Nothing much came up, unsurprisingly given that Saul Leiter was known for photographing almost exclusively in the few blocks around his NYC East Village home. One image from the search results clearly stood out though:
47kirkwood.jpg
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...and that led me to the following interview with accompanying images:

The interview is apparently following a standard format with standard questions which don't necessarily match Kirkwood's work (or dillydallying), but I like the overall discussion anyway. And I LOVE many of the images. It's not so much nature photography but more rural life photography, with some similarities to Saul Leiter's aestetic, but mostly a character and humor of its own.

Kirkwood's website
shows some of her genres. Her street work is mostly not my favorite although some of it really made me laugh. Her Cow Spines series was, to me, spectacular.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts!
 
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It took some time and viewing all of her pictures before I began to appreciate her style and vision. Minimalist and well-balanced compositions stand out. The fogged windows (beslagen ramen) remind me of Saul Leiter indeed. Thanks for the heads up, broadened my horizon in photography.
 
Thanks for sharing these, Bart! I'll have another look (or two) when I have a bit more time :)
Wonderfully inspiring indeed :)
 
Wow, thanks for introducing me to her work. Very exciting to see a different way of seeing and photographing.
 
The work is fantastic. I just finished reading a book by John Muir and I feel like he and she would get along nicely.

I do feel like the term street photography is a little weird, it's being stretched far beyond it's proper use maybe. But then, I tend to think that the best of the stuff HCB and Saul Leiter and Robert Frank etc. were doing was really just pure photography. And, like Kate, we respond to it and want to emulate it and "street" is the terminology that gets applied to it. Kudos to Kate for being able to see outside the box, I think it's harder for a lot of people, who get mired in all the silly rules about what street photography should and shouldn't be. It's just pure photography, and capturing the best moments instead of following a recipe.
 
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