"Godlis Streets" Photographs by David Godlis with Foreword by Luc Sante & Afterword by Chris Stein (Reel Art Press)

ISBN: 9781909526730

There have been hand-painted landscapes for centuries, but what the 19th and 20th centuries brought us is street photography. Like a drawing or painting, photography can capture the psychology or emotion of people in the picture. The difference between the two mediums of paintings/drawings and photography is that one is considered real, and the other is a representation by an artist. It can take days or even years to complete an oil painting, but snapping a photo can take seconds. Perhaps in the darkroom, another process occurs, where the photographer can manipulate the images or the darkness/lightness of that photo. Still, the immediate recording of an activity or history documented is a significant aspect of still photography. It's a medium that is like making punk rock music. One can know three-cords to write a song, and it takes an instant to capture an image with one's camera. It takes talent for sounds or an eye to making that image or song into art. Photographer David Godlis spent a great deal of time in 1970s New York to take pictures of musicians and fans in such punk locations such as CBGB's. 

 The urgency to capture a music scene as it happens also is a close relative to street photography. One sets the viewer's mind to photograph a poetic or surreal activity as it happens. Do photos lie? Perhaps, but the photographer's essence is to capture time at its most beautiful, profound, or at the very least, for amusement purposes. Godlis is not a Weegee type of street photographer. He is not out there to capture crime and murder scenes for the tabloid press. Godlis sets out to find images that one is pleasing to the eye. It gives some weight or presence to everyday people reflecting their inspirations and practices in an urban landscape that happens to be Manhattan and Boston. 

 In many of the images in this book, people look directly into Godlis's camera as he quickly snaps a shot. They have no time to react to the picture taken, and in fact, some look like they make contact with their eyes, but maybe they're thinking about their day as well. Or they have to keep a necessary appointment. The viewer of this book can make their narratives of who these people are. Still, all of them have that hardcore essence of living in a large and cosmopolitan landscape. 

 The juxtaposition of what looks like a businessman going to work but carrying a Playboy magazine or the two young women are approaching or going by an entrance that says "Service Gate." In that photo, a can and bottle of an empty beer bring up all sorts of narrations in these pictures. The black and white images are sharp, crisp, and I can feel the weather that day due to the clothing and the photographs themselves' mood. These photos essence sticks to one's mind. An awe-inspiring book of images that captures urban life as it happened.