Dancing in Warsaw

The world isn’t a stage, it’s a dancehall. Cities are huge dance floors full of people of every imaginable size, shape, colour, all dancing to the sound of a silent tune, whether they’re at work, shopping, picnicking in a park or simply getting from a to b. Just like its cousin the point and shoot camera, a camera phone takes forever to focus and set the exposure, sympathising with the dancers it films in its own whimsical manner, making a mockery of the photographer and producing accidental images that are more often than not badly composed disasters but that are occasionally astonishing. Walking through streets, markets, parks and shopping centres, standing on a tram, I’ve been predicting moments before they happen and shooting them as best I can, always without looking at the screen and shooting everything blind. This is merely an experiment, but I like it. I’ve thought long and hard about the idea of the street being a stage that one waits to be populated, and I still don’t like this way of working. True it almost always guarantees better photographs than taking them by running around pointing a mobile phone at things, but I feel there’s something (excuse the pun) staged about it, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. These seven photographs are the result of a reasonably quick experiment I tried out in Warsaw last week. A logical progression from what I was doing with my Eastbourne Pier postcards, expect more in the future. Larger versions of these photographs, with brief explanations, can currently be seen on DRR.