Street Photography and Documentary Portraiture

Tom R. Chambers spent three weeks in  Ahmedabad ,  India  teaching a Digital/New Media Arts workshop for graduate students at the  National Institute of Design . He also documented the streets in and around the city with the help of some of his students. They were instrumental in "opening doors" via introductions and translations so Chambers could make the photographs. The workshop culminated in the exhibition,  NMA@NID

This project re: Descendants of many of the  First Settlers of Rhode Island  pays tribute to the trials and tribulations that their Ancestors were subjected to during the early to middle  1600s . It offers a unique look and study of the State's early history as it relates to images of Descendants (contemporaries) as icons or symbols to pay tribute to and talk about their Ancestors' (First Settlers') contributions through text extracted from The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (and other sources).  This contemporary approach resurrects the past through the present: discussion of Ancestral contributions to the State's development via historical text and visualization of their Descendants, today (1986), through documentary photography to bring forth those founding bloodlines, and to offer to the viewer a likeness or similarity of features between the Descendants and their Ancestors. This project was funded by Providence 350, Inc. as a part of  Rhode Island ...

Chambers had the opportunity to collaborate with Choi Ok-soo, a South Korean documentary photographer, by putting together a two-person show, "People to People" for the Kumho Art Center, Gwangju, South Korea. This was the first time in Gwangju for a Korean and American photographer to come together to offer an East/West perspective on the Korean People and Culture. The project resides as part of the center's Permanent Collection. Chambers' photo sessions are staged in the sense that the subjects are posed in relation to their surroundings. A 20mm lens (extreme wide angle) is used to "condense" the view, and show the backdrop/background. The subjects' posture and expression come across as natural, but their "look" is manipulated through constant encouragement. They're not smiling, and in Chambers' opinion, a documentary portrait should not include this kind of expression. As soon as a subject smiles for the camera, he or she breaks chara...

This photo documentary project focuses on the denizens of a military street -  Dyer  - in  El Paso ,  Texas , 1983. The photo sessions are staged in the sense that the subjects are posed in relation to their surroundings. A 20mm lens (extreme wide angle) is used to "condense" the view, and show the backdrop/background. The subjects' posture and expression come across as natural, but their "look" is manipulated through constant encouragement. They're not smiling, and in Chambers' opinion, a documentary portrait should not include this kind of expression. As soon as a subject smiles for the camera, he or she breaks character. This action dilutes the nature of the image, and it becomes nothing more than a standard studio portrait. Exhibitions: "Dyer Street Portraiture" (solo show),  PhotoForum  Online Gallery,  Rochester Institute of Technology , Rochester, New York, U.S.A., 1997. "Dyer Street Portraiture", "Photo 1991" (group ...

Interview (podcast): All Street Images are Important with Tom Chambers (streetphotographymagazine.com) Tom R. Chambers has been a very active street photographer since the 1980s when he began photographing in and around El Paso Texas. Since then, he’s lived all over the world including India and China. He began his photographic journey while working for NASA on the Apollo project where he documented the lunar soil brought back to earth by the Apollo astronauts. Tom is also a teacher and he’s putting that experience to work to introduce photographers in his area to street photography. Most recently Tom created an intensive street photography workshop in partnership with the famous Precision Camera in Austin called  Street Photography and Documentary Portraiture . The three-week workshop runs in the month of June. Tom says that it’s vital that street photographers get to know their camera inside and out so that they can be totally focused on the activity in the streets while shooting...