School... They gave me the impossible assignment to make a series of my street. They told me to involve my neighbors and tell the story of my street. I didn't know what the story of my street was.
After my first attempt got rejected, my teacher asked me about my street. All I could think of was that it was basically just a through-street. It's a pretty wide street for how close it is to the city center. A lot of traffic doesn't have to be in my street. At times it is super busy... You get the drill.
I was ready to just photograph how traffic just passed my street. But had no clue how to involve my neighbors in that attempt. And then something bad happened that gave my whole assignment a surprising new direction.
At the end of May, there was an incident where multiple people got stabbed nearby. One person even died. And it was the talk of the town, so to say. I walked past a flower shrine that had developed in respect of the victim that died. I took a few photos. Little did I know, that it would become the start of my street-series.
One of my neighbors told me that at night, some dodgy stuff was going on. Was it drug deals? It was time to see if I could take some photos of that, without getting caught. Just in case it really was super dodgy. Before I knew it, I was behaving like a serious police observation team. By paying attention to what was happening there, it became clear how much activity I normally missed by just watching Netflix.
So many cars and motor-scooters! I started getting confident about my theme. When walking around the street, I paid attention to other tiny details that were related to crime. I never knew that there were so many security cameras around my place!!
But if you talk crime, you also talk police. And how do you get a photo of a police car in your street when you need one? My fellow students joked about just calling the police and wait with my camera. I didn't think that was the way to go. And I didn't need to.... 2 days later, I suddenly heard a whole bunch of sirens outside. I grabbed my camera and got the final shot of my series.
And there it was. A series of events changed my through-street into a very criminal street within a week. But please let it change back to the boring through-street again! I already got my shots, Universe!