“I don’t know about perfection, but if they have anything in common, it’s a result of a long, continuing love of art history,” photographer Richard Bram tells the Phoblographer when asked about how he knows he’s got the perfect shot. “If you want to know what makes a good picture, you have to look at a million pictures – then you’ll know. If you’re searching for a tag to hang these particular photos on, that’s more difficult.” He’s been exhibiting his work for over 30 years, and in a few days you’ll be able to see much of his incredible work for yourself.
All images by Richard Bram. Used with permission. Follow him on Instagram @photobram52 and check out his website. You can see the “Oaxacan Sketchbooks” for yourself from May 11th to June 13th, 2024 are the Galería La Mano Mágica in Oaxaca.
The Story of Richard Bram
He never thought about being a photographer growing up, but he loved taking pictures. “In 1984, when I was 32 years old, my ordinary business career came to an ignominious end,” Richard tells us. “A personal crisis became a major turning point. With the encouragement of friends, I decided to do something completely crazy – to become a professional photographer!” What else is this besides the story of having an incredible support network of encouraging people? Well, it’s the story of a new career! Richard, however, says that he worked hard and had a little bit of luck.
He became a public relations photographer. “The job is to make everything look nice: business presentations, receptions, press conferences, ribbon cuttings, company group shots and things like that,” he explains. “Within a couple of years I had a regular clientele as a commercial public relations and event photographer.” To some of us, it sounds like a dream. To others, it might sound really soul-sucking. In fact, he eventually lost the spontaneity he had when he started.
“I began to notice the uncomfortable moments that occurred during the events I was being paid to photograph. I would take these photos as well, though not show them to the client. I wanted them to hire me again, after all.”
Richard Bram
That’s how he became intrigued by the candid moment. These days, Richard captures moments with the Leica M10 and a 35mm f2 lens. He also uses the original Leica Q. “These are the right tools for me and the way I like to work, quiet and unobtrusive,” Richard explains. “I have never felt comfortable using a big honking SLR/DSLR working on the street…But depending on my mood, or if I simply feel like shooting black and white, I might go out with a Rolleiflex TLR, Olympus XA, or an old Soviet Horizont panoramic.” These tools help Richard keep things fun and vary it up enough.
The Story of Oaxaca
Richard first started coming to Oaxaca in the late 90s and then started coming back regularly since then. He calls it a special place and speaks of his fond reverence of it. He says that there’s a ton of stuff to photograph, but that he always is on the search for the same things no matter what.
In the black and whites, a graffito scratched into a wall of a dancing girl caught my eye on my first trip here. There’s a child with a shy gesture just before a performance. A boy went by on the top of a pick-up truck with palm leaves fanning out behind him like a rooster’s tail. (Quick! Don’t think! Take a picture! One frame.) A little girl is sucking on a drink as the quotidian street life of Oaxaca is all around. A little boy is apparently about to murder his father on the Zocaló! But in most of the photos, there is also a sense of beauty. I believe that it is still a beautiful world despite all the horrors going on as I type.
Richard Bram
In 2010, Richard switched over to color for his personal work and took the same approach. He finds color more difficult to do well, though. In fact, he can tell the stories of the few frames that simply worked for him when shooting color.
Shooting public relations taught Richard how to be aware of things. Because of the fact that corporate sponsors wanted to see their logos at the events, he was always cogniscent of backgrounds. He’s also always alert to gestures that could make someone look totally different. “My earlier street photography style often emphasized the first, carefully juxtaposing foreground and background for visual or humorous effect,” he states. “The pictures I’ve been making in the last few years are more concerned with gesture, whether it is explicit or implied, which can give a photo interest and gravity. As you look at these few examples, you can see the slight change in my style: the black and whites are earlier; the color later.” Indeed, Richard’s best photographs overall emphasize the importance of a moment. However, they’re often far less chaotic than what you find in the work of many other street photographers from London, New York, or other big cities. They’re best defined as the small micro-moments that we sometimes miss.
In fact, he even admits that and states that he prefers to be gentle — and he doesn’t want to present people in an artificially harsh way. It’s one of the reasons why he doesn’t often use Flash either. The times that he used flash, he was often angry, and was projecting that into the images. Of course, he also captures the sometimes darker side of life.
Many times, he’s often trying to balance composition and moment in the editing process. He admits that it’s a difficult process. “When you look at Winogrand’s photographic compositions, at first they seem random, but there is a balance and formality in the chaos,’ says Richard. “Look at Joel Sternfeld’s slow-motion street photography. There’s still strong composition even though it may not seem like it because it is spontaneous, from real life.”
Thoughts on AI Imagery
Richard is a pretty traditional photographer — he used film and printed his own works. More than that, he also does barely any editing in post-production. And with that said, he doesn’t care much about AI imagery.
“I’m a good darkroom printer and treat my digital files the same traditional way: a bit of exposure and contrast adjustment, a bit of burning and dodging if necessary, but nothing radical. I won’t change the color of something in a photograph or remove something from or add an element to an image. Mild cropping is about as radical as I get. I’ve never thought about using an AI tool to create my final images and frankly don’t know how.”
Richard Bram
Citing his Italian colleagues, he calls it Syntography – which is synthetic photography. Like many other photographers, he thinks this is a new medium and thinks we shouldn’t overreact about it. In fact, he states that photography has always had composites.
AI photos are things that he relates more to our dreams than anything else. “Syntography is an art form and the best of it, like all art, will have content too,” Richard states. …The worst of it is mostly, in essence, bad Photoshop – six-fingered hands, too many arms or not enough feet, and so on. And in commercial work, none of it bothers me – advertising has always been artificial.”
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT BY RICHARD BRAM
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
