Today, I’m joined by Melissa O’Shaughnessy, a street photographer from New York City. Her work resonates with me because of the very natural moments and expressions, which are still interesting and, at times, amusing to observe.
Follow Melissa O’Shaughnessy:
- Website: https://melissaoshaughnessy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissaoshaughnessy/?hl=en
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- My website: www.fredericpaulussen.be
Timestamps of this episode with Melissa O’Shaughnessy
00:00 Introduction to Street Photography and Melissa O’Shaughnessy
02:59 The Journey into Street Photography
06:04 The Shift from Analog to Digital
09:00 The Role of Constraints in Photography
11:55 Embracing Serendipity in Street Photography
14:52 Self-Reflection Through Photography
17:49 The Impact of Environment on Photography
20:46 Capturing Candid Moments
23:55 The Evolution of Street Photography
27:04 Nostalgia and the Value of Vintage Photography
31:01 The Evolution of Urban Photography
32:24 Navigating the Crowded Streets of New York
35:13 The Role of Instagram in Street Photography
35:59 Community and Collaboration in Photography
39:09 The Importance of Printing Your Work
48:02 Finding Inspiration Beyond Social Media
53:43 Embracing Failure and the Journey of Growth
Photographers, resources, and gear mentioned in this episode:
- Melissa’s Book, Perfect Strangers: https://melissaoshaughnessy.com/book/
- Joel Meyerowitz
- Nikon D700
- Tri-X film
- Foto App
- Women Street Photographers
- Gulnara Samoilova
- In public collective, https://in-public.com/
- Chris Harrison
Thank you for listening to this conversation with Melissa. Don’t forget to subscribe to be updated about upcoming episodes. Feel free to reach out via social media if you have any questions or ideas you’d like to share.
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Podcast Transcript
Frederic Paulussen (00:01)
So today I’m joined by Melissa O’Shaughnessy, street photographer from New York City. Her work resonates with me because of the very natural moments and expressions of the people she ⁓ photographs on the streets, which are to me very interesting and at times even very amusing to observe. To me there’s a big, I don’t know if comedy is the right aspect, but there’s a funny aspect to her photos.
So hey Melissa, could you introduce yourself for a second?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (00:33)
Well, thank you so much Frederic for having me. ⁓ As you said, I’m a New York City based street photographer. I’ve been photographing out on the streets for about 10 years. I’ll take this little occasion to…
plug my book, which was recently republished by Aperture after being out of print for many years. So that book is called Perfect Strangers and is, I think, a good representation of my body of work, which I continue to do both in New York and elsewhere now.
as I continue to look at the world and try to find humor and pathos and joy and struggle in the real world as it’s lived out in public.
Frederic Paulussen (01:19)
cool yeah yeah i’ve ordered the book it’s not here yet but it’s on its way here so i’m very looking forward to to that one so you mentioned that you were looking for for art but first let’s start back to the 10 years ago did you just like jump in street photography immediately was it like a big love within seconds or did it take some time
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (01:24)
Fantastic, thank you.
It took some time. I had started photography.
five or six years earlier, actually working with black and white. I had a dark room ⁓ in our home because my son had taken a photography course in high school and wanted to build a dark room. So we cobbled together a little closet in the basement and his passion waned and I figured, well, I ought to learn what this is all about. So I started out really not on the street at all. I was very shy. I did a lot of landscape and architecture and city things and it wasn’t until.
I took a workshop with Joel Meyerowitz that the little bug and the little seed was planted about street photography. Joel mentioned that street photography and the split second was the really unique capability of the camera. ⁓
painters had done portraits and landscapes and sculptors had done the human figure and the split second was something that was unique to the camera and it really planted a seed of a spark of interest for me.
I started out maybe in 2013, 14, and I was terribly shy. I didn’t think that I had the moxie to be out on the street and to take pictures of strangers. But I was really determined and really fascinated by this approach and this idea that it’s such a unique.
It’s a unique capacity of photography to catch this like a second. So it was just very determined and out on the street a couple days a week. And it took me a year or two to start making pictures here and there that I thought were getting somewhere. So that was the genesis when I was off to the races.
Frederic Paulussen (03:46)
wow, yeah. That’s cool that you, because to me it’s surprising that you would follow a ⁓ workshop with Meyerowitz that early in your street photography career. But it’s cool that it sparked such a long career already, like 10 years is for a lot of people already a long time.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (04:05)
And
interesting, the workshop wasn’t a street photography workshop. It was just a photography workshop because as you may know, Joel has worked in many areas of photography. He’s maybe best known for his street work, but his career certainly has encompassed kind of everything that a camera can do from the small handheld Leica to the large 8×10 view camera. So…
Frederic Paulussen (04:09)
Okay.
Okay, so there was a general workshop.
Okay, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (04:33)
It was a more general workshop, but
⁓ his idea that the split second is really an important aspect of what the camera does was really, really sent me down the street, as they say.
Frederic Paulussen (04:51)
Yeah,
literally and figuratively. That’s cool, yeah, and you mentioned the darkroom in your house. Do you still do some analog work or is it purely digital now?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (05:02)
I don’t,
slowly I moved to digital when the digital cameras moved to full frame. think it was a…
maybe a Nikon D700 or something like that, that I felt because I had quickly moved from 35 millimeter to medium format in the darkroom because I wanted the information. I wanted ⁓ more of a negative to work with, a sharper image. And so when the digital cameras went full frame is when I started to move to color. Yeah. ⁓
Frederic Paulussen (05:36)
okay as well so you used to do only
black and white and then evolve to color
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (05:40)
Yeah, and
I think if I was to do a project in black and white again, I’d probably use film because I’ve never been able to ⁓ take a color digital image and process it to look like the film that I was accustomed to. So I think if I was to go back to analog, it would be because I would want to work in black and white. You know, the beautiful Tri-X film.
Frederic Paulussen (06:04)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (06:08)
has such a look that I’ve never been able to replicate in a digital image.
Frederic Paulussen (06:14)
So do you, because we’re talking about color and black and white now and you mainly shoot color, well, digitally color, is there like a reason for you to go back to black and white or is it more like maybe a once? No, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (06:26)
Not right now, but it’s
not right now, my attraction to black and white, I think resides in film.
Frederic Paulussen (06:36)
Okay,
yeah. So yeah, I prefer color as well, but of course, it’s a personal choice for everyone. There’s also like ⁓ a moment for each. So that was why I was wondering.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (06:46)
I think
for me color is more challenging. ⁓ It’s more exacting and certainly on the street so unpredictable. So I don’t know, it’s whatever is your constraint that works for you. right now color is working for me.
Frederic Paulussen (07:06)
I find it a very interesting word, the constraint. Do you need like a constraint in your street photography or your photography in general to have it be creative or?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (07:17)
⁓ Yeah, I think so. I think maybe constraints are more meaningful in terms of a body of work or a project. That you can’t just say everything is potential for this body of work. So certainly there are constraints are important. And yes, I do think it’s like back in high school and college when you were assigned a paper, ⁓
you were always told, define, constrain what you’re going to do where you’re going to have too much material to work with. So ⁓ I think in terms of, I mean, I start with a very open approach to the streets, but it has to…
Frederic Paulussen (07:54)
That’s true,
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (08:07)
start, it has to start funneling into something meaningful and that is usually the constraints that you give it. In the case of my book, it was the city itself. It was Manhattan. ⁓ It was the minute I started to pull in pictures from other places, it was, it felt too undefined as to what I was trying to get at. But certainly the constraint does not need to be geographical. ⁓
the subject matter or the mood of a body of work.
Frederic Paulussen (08:43)
Very true, yeah. So, and do you…
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (08:45)
or the camera you’re using or the format you’re shooting in
or the color palette. It can be any number of things.
Frederic Paulussen (08:53)
Yeah, I think if we start listing up things, I think we can fill an hour very, very fast with just a list of possible constraint ideas. ⁓ is it, that, do you always work like, because you’re speaking about project, is that something you, you’re always have a project in mind or do you go out in the street and then afterwards say like, this photo fits here, this photo fits here or?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (09:00)
Yeah.
No, I don’t, I work very loose and I let the project bubble up from the work.
That’s how my book came about. I was shooting everywhere. I was shooting all over New York. the work, for me, I mean, some people say you have to have an idea when you go out. For me, that doesn’t work because then I’m missing things or I’m so focused on one thing that I’m not open to other things that are happening. I’m working in a split second in the real world, in the rain, in the snow, in the sun, in the light.
If
you’re looking for something specific, you tend to find it, but then perhaps you’re missing other things that are going on. So I start with a very open approach and let the, as the pictures accumulate, as the interesting pictures accumulate, then it starts to gel into something, your vision, your point of view start to direct you.
to what you’re saying. That’s, that’s for me, that’s how I approach it.
Frederic Paulussen (10:26)
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s one of the messages from this podcast as well. It’s like there’s no right or wrong. It’s just every photographer has their way of working and it’s only here to inspire how you could work. And so you don’t really go out like you go out the door in the morning or whatever with like an idea of I need these pictures or this subject or whatever or it’s just. Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (10:54)
No, no, very open to,
listen, the good pictures are very, very few and far between. So many pictures, every street photography.
person who’s doing this takes a lot of really terrible, boring, failed pictures. It’s an exercise in failure and it becomes an exercise in humility. You come back and you think I was out for six or seven hours and I got nothing. And it can be very discouraging, but…
That leads you into thinking more about how you enjoy the process and what you get out of the process and what you learn from the process. And for me, it’s become watching the world and being more open to human behavior and light and mood. more you leave yourself open to chance, the more you can be delighted and surprised by what is going to appear in front of you.
Frederic Paulussen (11:55)
Yeah, and
your photos are very surprising. Like there are a lot of instances that I could not imagine. ⁓ So it’s very, very fun.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (12:06)
Well, that’s, and
that is the appeal for me that therein lay the deep appeal to working in this way. is, truth is stranger than fiction and things that happen and how things can come together on the street are things that you couldn’t imagine or set up really.
⁓ You’re really relying on serendipity and the energy of the street and the delight of how people can behave. You become a bit of ⁓ a sociologist. can, you do it long enough, you start to understand that how things might come together if you wait a few seconds. ⁓ You start to be able to anticipate what people might do.
Frederic Paulussen (12:48)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (12:56)
But my favorite photographs of mine, I think, and others are those that have such serendipity in them. Things come together quickly and things that you, the great surprise when you open a picture, when you look at it, when you open a file or develop a negative and you see things in the picture that you did not see when you took the photograph. And that is…
the real delight, you’re hanging on to a moment, the cameras are revealing more in a moment than your brain can absorb in that split second. And so it’s a way for us to examine the world, to hold on to a moment, to examine the world more carefully. ⁓ And that’s what keeps you going through all those long days of failure, is those moments when things do come together and show us something about who we are as people.
We’re funny, we do odd things, we’re beautiful, we’re predictable and unpredictable in the same frame. And that’s what is…
That’s what compels me. I think that’s what compels a lot of people to do this very inefficient kind of strange thing. I mean, when you talk to someone who knows nothing about photography or street photography and you say, well, I go out all day and I take pictures of strangers, it seems maybe not as odd these days as it did 10 or 20 years ago. It’s like, why would you want a picture of someone you don’t know? Why would you want that?
Frederic Paulussen (14:09)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (14:36)
I think it’s become a much, you know, with Instagram and the internet, I think it’s become a much, much more broadly understood genre. But
really when you think about it is it is kind of odd we’re all kind of strange in in it yeah i mean like why would you want a picture of someone you don’t know why are you taking pictures of strangers but i do it because i it reveals something about the world to me and about me to myself
Frederic Paulussen (14:52)
If you put it this way, it’s really strange. It’s almost…
Yeah, I was gonna ask because you were talking about, you know, observing people and what it tells about them. But I was also wondering, do you reflect that back to yourself? Like, do you know more things about yourself now through photography or are there things that you see in your own work that you’re like, this is very personal to me, that resembles me?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (15:34)
Very,
very much so. think…
I think sometimes others can see it in your work more than you can see it yourself. Sometimes, you know, I three children and when they were young people say, your children all look like siblings. And when you’re so close to your kids or your family, you maybe don’t see that strong resemblance. And sometimes it helps to have someone else to look at your work or say, yeah, that really looks like one of your pictures. But yes, I mean, I think one of the things that I love about this process is that it’s
made me a more confident and outgoing person. As I mentioned earlier, I’m an introvert. I’m quite shy, actually. But when you’re out in the world and observing people and lifting your camera to take pictures of people, slowly you become, I think, more outgoing, more interested in other people, less threatened or…
frightened or reticent in the presence of other people. So I’ve made so many friends on various street corners in the city and through a shared passion and it’s opened up a really rich texture in the world for me that I might not have otherwise.
seen or experienced. You’re putting yourself out in the world all the time, all day long. And it’s a very, it’s kind of a strangely introverted process that brings on a degree of extraversion in your work and in your life. So yeah, it’s changed me. It’s helped me grow. think
Also, hopefully if you’re building a body of work that’s identifiable to you, it will start to show in your pictures, your life experiences, your interests, what attracts you, what makes you lift that camera to your eye are all very internal impulses. I have three children, I have six grandchildren.
mother recently died, I cared for her for many, many years. So looking at the elderly or looking at families and how they behave and crying children and family resemblances, these are all things that attract me and make me lift the camera to my eye. And those are all based on my own experience.
But then hopefully you grow beyond that and your interest expands to more than just your own experience, but hopefully you communicate it in a way that is somehow, some way, identifiable. I mean, some people have said of my work that it’s very intimate. Well, I’m short and I hit people lower than a six foot tall man. And I think that very, the very fact of my height,
does lend my pictures something, a lower perspective that maybe that people have said give them a sense of intimacy, but that’s beyond my control. I’m only so tall ⁓ and I can get a little lower, but usually ⁓ I’m shooting from about my eye level, but my eye level is lower than your average man and this is still, you know, there are.
Frederic Paulussen (18:59)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (19:05)
lots of women doing it, but still more men, I think. certainly the history of the genre is to a large degree the work of men and who are just taller in general. So that’s a very, very broad generalization, but I think that is something that plays a little part in giving my work a certain identity.
Frederic Paulussen (19:31)
Yeah, I like, I don’t like, I love how conscious you are about all these thoughts about how it reflects back to you and all those things. And it’s funny you mentioned the height because I was wondering if you, ⁓ well, not necessarily because of the perspective, but also because how the photos were made, if you were shooting from the hip or not. But then you’re always looking through the viewfinder.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (19:51)
No
Yep, I’m always, almost always, I’m no good at shooting from the hip. I cut people off and I’ve never gotten that right. And to me, it feels a little sneaky. I I’m very quick, but I’m not trying to be sneaky. I wear my camera around my neck. It’s not wrapped around my wrist. ⁓ I kind of dress very simply and unobtrusively and I kind of try to look like a tourist.
Frederic Paulussen (19:59)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (20:24)
So people see me coming. I’ve got the camera. I always raise it to my eye because I am trying to frame my, I mean, listen, there’s a lot of the failure is because you miss the moment, you miss the framing, you miss the composition, but.
Frederic Paulussen (20:24)
Okay.
that’s the game of course,
yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (20:43)
But I get it to my eye very quickly, you know, up and down. I’m not just holding the camera in front of my face. I’m pretty quick when I see a situation coming and I’m working with a fixed focal length so I don’t have to fiddle with the zoom. I work kind of equally with a 28 or a 35. So I know what that’s gonna do for me pretty quickly. I know when I’m in the right position to just get the camera up and down very quickly.
Frederic Paulussen (20:46)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (21:09)
So usually I’m unnoticed, but I do bring it to my eye.
Frederic Paulussen (21:13)
Okay yeah because your photos feel very candid so that’s why I was wondering for the shooting from the hip, not really for the perspective but mainly because it’s like your subjects are very unbothered or on… how do you say it?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (21:31)
Unnoticed, I’m unnoticed.
Frederic Paulussen (21:32)
Yeah,
they’re very candid, there’s no interaction or rarely there’s like people looking into the lens or… ⁓
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (21:39)
Yeah.
Well,
I’m not a purist in that regard at all. I don’t mind someone gazing into the lens. And it’s usually the children who notice you first because they really pay attention in a way that many adults do not. So I have a number of pictures where the children are looking straight at me and the adults are clueless. And I’ve said before, it’s a reminder that we should try to look at the world with that sort of attention that a child can manage. They’re really noticing.
Frederic Paulussen (21:55)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (22:11)
everything around them. So I don’t mind if there’s eye contact, it happens. And sometimes it’s a really interesting element in a photograph. But I try not to bruise the situation. I try not to be the focal point of the life on the street.
Frederic Paulussen (22:29)
Yeah.
And so there’s, you’re very people oriented. there a reason for, mentioned of course being shy and now that you developed, but was there like an original ⁓ purpose that you were shooting people in general and especially, or maybe your style was always this up close to people, but ⁓ is there an idea? Because some people, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (22:54)
Well,
think it’s people I’m after. It’s the life on the street that I’m after. And when I started out in photography and as I started to become interested in street photography, even earlier when I was doing black and white work, I found myself in the books that I was buying, the photographs that I was most interested in had people in them.
And ⁓ I worked in the landscape early on, but I kind of bored myself pretty quickly. Not that I wouldn’t do it again. I certainly would. I think there’s beautiful work done that doesn’t have people in it. But what I was interested in was the human condition and the… ⁓
incredible variety and energy of people out living their life in public, in public places. So it’s just, what I’m interested in. It’s what I’ve, it is the larger purpose for me in using a camera. And the fact that it is so quick, it is so unpredictable, the surprises are,
Frederic Paulussen (23:55)
Yeah.
That’s very nice, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (24:15)
very gratifying in a way that…
Bringing a camera out into the landscape just isn’t for me.
the surprise. It’s the surprise of what shows up ⁓ in the lens and the picture in the world that propels me at this point.
Frederic Paulussen (24:38)
It’s maybe easier in New York, I’m not sure, but in Antwerp there’s like very little, there’s not a lot of people, so there’s less surprise in that regard. So when it happens, it’s really, it makes you very happy. ⁓ But yeah, it’s very, that’s the fun thing. If you see something unexpected, that’s what you’re after. You can always make a static photos shooting through a broken window or whatever. ⁓
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (24:50)
Mm-hmm.
Frederic Paulussen (25:08)
But those unique moments for me as well, they’re what make me happy.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (25:13)
Yeah, I mean…
Yeah,
and New York is a generous place. ⁓ And it’s funny, again, back to being an introvert, I sometimes giggle to myself because I’ll find myself in the most crowded place that can be found in the city. And these were places that I would never have been drawn to 15 or 20 years ago. I would have avoided like the plague. I kind of hate crowds. But again, that’s changed because that’s where the food is. That’s where the material is.
Frederic Paulussen (25:27)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (25:45)
So, you know, I…
dive head first into these very crowded, chaotic places. And then the challenge is to tame it a bit, to not make it so chaotic that it’s unreadable. So I just went to the Minnesota State Fair. For years, I’ve been trying to get there in August. I grew up in Minnesota, which is in the Midwest of the United States. And as a child and teenager and young adult went to the state fair and I thought, that might be a fun thing to go turn into a project.
Frederic Paulussen (25:52)
That’s very cool.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (26:17)
But, and it was so crowded. It was so crowded that I couldn’t make sense of it. It was just a mass of humanity and the world had changed a lot. ⁓ My memory of the place was different from what it has become.
Interestingly, even though was so crowded, I found the people more homogenized. People, used to be that you’d get the really rough kind of, rough looking out of state farmers and the carnival attendants were really, really rough characters who looked like they had been up all night in a bar fight. And now it’s very sanitized. It’s very, all the carnies were in nice clean white blue polo shirts and the people.
didn’t get the sense of the diversity that I remembered from 35 or so years ago. I think that’s a problem everywhere, how much more homogenized culture has become around the world even. You people from, you know, Rome.
to New York, to California, to probably Antwerp and all over the place. Even I’ve not spent much time in the Far East, but I think there’s in our dress and in our demeanor, there’s been a certain leveling and a globalization that has made the world less diverse in many ways.
Frederic Paulussen (27:45)
Yeah, I can imagine what
you’re trying to say. ⁓ But at the same time, yeah, no, go ahead, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (27:52)
So I spent a couple
days at the state fair and didn’t really, I wasn’t really, thought, ⁓ do I want to do this every year for five years? And the answer was no. So I spent, I actually spent a lot of time in the cow barn and the pig barn and where the really state fair, ⁓ the animals and.
Frederic Paulussen (28:03)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (28:13)
than the horses. was, I found that more interesting and the people around them is kind of where I ended up spending my time. But I haven’t really gone through the pictures yet. This was just a week ago. So, but the idea, I think the challenge now too is that the world has become. ⁓
you see less characters on the street. There’s people dress alike and everyone’s on their phones. So it’s always a challenge. think every era has presented its challenges. People are maybe a little more sensitive about having their picture taken. But I’m small and I’m middle-aged and I’m a petite woman and I don’t think I’m very threatening. ⁓
So that works to my advantage. But yeah, we’re documenting our world. We’re documenting the time we live in. So this is the material we’re working with. We’re working with the world as it looks now. And I think it will be, yeah. Yeah.
Frederic Paulussen (29:08)
I was thinking it could be a subject as well like the homogenization as you say yeah
Yeah, I can imagine it’s true if you look at the older photos it’s very… well of course there’s a nostalgia part maybe but it looks so much more fun in those days but at same time I also think about there’s… ⁓ you only see the best work of the photographers back then so it’s always like a… ⁓
It’s hard to ⁓ compare the photos and the vision we had of earlier days and from now for me because we have this, well first of all you only have black and white back then and now we have color. It’s different outfits but yeah so it’s for me it’s hard to compare. ⁓
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (30:05)
Well, I think it certainly in kind of a larger art world, there’s not a lot of interest in contemporary street photography, but the minute something takes on, you know, the patina of age and the value of maybe in a vintage print and the value of 30 or 40.
50, 60 years between now and what the world like then, street photography then takes on a greater appeal to people, I think, because there is that nostalgia, this look at what the world used to look like. So I started so late in life, I’ll be dead before my work gets that kind of age on it, but ⁓ I do think it is a, it’s important.
genre, I think, in this open way of looking at the world and our history and what the world looked like.
We’re recording human nature, how people behaved, how the city looked. I mean, there’s a real appeal to photographs from 70 or 80 years ago when there was so much smog and the air wasn’t very clean. It was very beautiful, made for very beautiful photographs. But we don’t want to be out all day breathing that anymore. The world is, certainly the United States is much cleaner. The air is much cleaner than it used to be.
⁓ So.
Frederic Paulussen (31:33)
That’s actually my
hate for Antwerp is it’s too clean. Like the streets, it’s all very, like you don’t have many like bus stops with windows that are graffitied on, it’s all very clean. That’s my annoyance with the city because it gives less photo opportunities. But at same time, yeah, it’s better to live in, of course. So it’s, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (31:37)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, well, I think the challenge I think always is if I’m lucky to be in New York City, but the big challenge is to make work where you are because that’s where you’re going to be able to make the most work. So I think you have to ⁓ embrace where you are and try to record what it is now if street photography is your passion and your interest.
Frederic Paulussen (32:10)
Exactly.
Very true, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (32:24)
So
really there’s too much work coming out of New York. The popular corners get crowded on a beautiful afternoon. There’s a lot of street photographers. So it’s a real challenge to make work that’s unique to you because it’s a crowded field in New York. It really is. And the history of street photography is bloated with the work of New York photographers.
but it is a Mecca. ⁓
Frederic Paulussen (32:56)
And do you notice
it now with like Instagram taking off for example, because you’ve been doing this for 10 years, which is more or less since the start of Instagram. Do you notice like a difference in the amount of people you see in the streets doing street photography?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (33:10)
It ebbs and flows. You I’ve been pretty consistently working for the past 10 years in New York. I’ve seen, you know, groups of photographers come and go who haven’t stuck with it or have changed. Listen, it can be a demoralizing and exhausting thing and not everybody stays with it. I think Instagram certainly played a…
essential part in the growth and popularity of street photography. ⁓ But, and there are the diehards, there are people I know who’ve been out there doing it just like me consistently for a decade and more.
⁓ But people do come and go. We all recognize each other, the regulars out there, which ⁓ is a great thing. I’ve made great friends over the years on Fifth and 42nd and Herald Square. So there’s a very personal side to it, which has been a delight. And ⁓ I certainly think Instagram has fueled the interest. ⁓
whether it sustains. I think everybody’s noticing people aren’t engaging with Instagram nearly as much as they did in the earlier days when it wasn’t so bloated with advertising and so controlled by the algorithm. I think people felt their feed was more personal and they could follow who they followed and see the work and now it feels kind of beyond the control. But listen.
I don’t own my Instagram account. I use it. It’s an important tool for photographers these days, but not for a minute do I think I own my following or my exposure. Meta’s got it and you have to live with it and deal with it. And just no one has come in to replace it, unfortunately.
Frederic Paulussen (35:09)
Yeah.
Not yet, no. Yeah, you have the Foto
app, but it’s not the size of a… Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (35:17)
It’s a necessary evil. Nothing has
come in to replace it yet. Some have tried. ⁓ But it is what it is. I think a lot of people are pretty disgruntled. But I what are you going to do? ⁓
Frederic Paulussen (35:32)
For it’s up and
down, sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. So you mentioned, or not really meeting up with people in the streets, bumping into other photographers in the streets. I also saw you were a member of Women Street Photographers and Up Photographers. Is there like, joining a community change your work or your way of thinking about street photography? Or was it purely…
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (35:35)
Yeah, yeah.
yes and no. The ⁓ Women’s Street Photographers is not something you join. Gulnara Samoilova founded it to show, to really…
show the work of women street photographers. She felt that they were underrepresented and not given enough attention. And so she started running contests and doing two or three times a year. She does incredible shows of the women work of women street photographers. So that’s just I’ve been a part of it because I’ve submitted work and it’s a great community of women who support each other. But, you know, I think most women too just don’t want to be known as a
Frederic Paulussen (36:13)
Okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (36:40)
woman street photographer, I certainly don’t. mean, I’m a woman, but I mean, I don’t think men run around saying, you know, I’m a male street photographer, I’m a street photographer. And… ⁓
Frederic Paulussen (36:45)
you’re a street photographer,
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (36:52)
but it’s a very laudable thing she’s done. I think she’s brought a lot of attention to the great work that women are doing. Certainly at the time she started it, it was clear that women were underrepresented. Up Photographers is a collective that kind of grew out of the old in public collective, which was really the first and probably best known street photography collective that was formed probably 20 years ago. And that…
that was, we’re just not as active as we used to be as a group. It’s not a collective with any mercantile purpose. It’s photographers from all over the world. And so a couple of us used to kind of keep the show on the road for a while, but I think people’s interest averaged and it was hard to keep this group pulling, you know, involved.
in any meaningful way. I think we’re all doing a show in Pisa in September. Unfortunately, I can’t make it over there. So now and then projects will pop up or we’ll have a nice Zoom call. We were good during the pandemic when nobody could be out and about to have monthly Zoom meetings just to catch up with each other. So it’s become as much just a group of friends as a collective with any real purpose at this point.
it’s just hard if you don’t have a president or a charter or dues or some collective, quote unquote, purpose. I think these groups are kind of hard to keep together. Certainly, I think that kind of the age of the collective seems to be a little behind us. But it’s an incredible group of talented people who are all still out photographing and making work and…
Frederic Paulussen (38:28)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (38:43)
If we’re all in the same city or in Paris for Paris Photo or in a group show, I think we’ll gather as many as we can and it’s lovely. for me at this point, it’s become again about the friendships that I’ve made as much about any purpose of the collective as a whole.
Frederic Paulussen (39:04)
but it didn’t really impact you creatively or visionarily.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (39:09)
Well, when I was starting
out, I would go to the in public website, you know, all the time to look at the new work that they were putting up and the other photographers they were showing and the work that was being done. ⁓ And I think we keep our, you I’m actually run the website for the group and we try to get new stuff up every now and then. So it doesn’t just feel like the flotsam of the internet. ⁓
And I would love to, I have put a shout out to say, hey, if you have new work, let’s get some new portfolios up. Because I think it, at now, the website is, I think, is a resource for street photographers who want to look at work online and not just on Instagram. But Instagram really big-footed a lot of things. ⁓ And now, it’ll be interesting to see what…
to see what happens. A lot of people are kind of disgruntled with Instagram and not putting the energy into it that they used to. Plus the pictures are two inches wide. If you really want to look at street photography, it would be lovely. mean, go to a museum or a gallery and look at people’s websites and things on your computer screen so you have a little more real estate to appreciate the complexity of what can be going on in these pictures.
Frederic Paulussen (40:07)
I also…
Yeah, that’s why I love websites as well. It presents the photos much better in a more qualitative way. It’s not just like, as you said, small picture on a phone screen.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (40:47)
But it’s also, I’ll just put a plug in here for printing, for printing your work. It’s really, I really, when I do, I print my work. I’ll start with a little by four by, yeah, yeah, I’m just kind of putting some pairs together. Print your work because you’re gonna find, you’re gonna find problems in a print that you might not otherwise notice, or strengths.
Frederic Paulussen (40:51)
Yeah.
Yeah, I see a wall behind you.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (41:09)
and you can put it up on a wall and walk by it 10 times a day and the picture will grow on you or not. And a print is, it’s a good skill to have. It’s a good way to look at your work. It’s a good way to lay out work and think about it more in terms of a single photo. It’s not backlit. So you’re going to be challenged by some shadows and highlights that you might not otherwise notice if you’re only looking at screens.
The backlit screen can enliven a photo that in a print needs, it’s missing something. So print it. I remember in my darkroom days when I would put that roll of film in the…
and ⁓ spool it onto the reel and I’d be so excited to see what I had shot and I would develop the film and then I would pull it out and look at it under the darkroom light and then I’d be excited. But I always thought my excitement and pleasure was ⁓ sloped downwards because by the time I got to the individual photos I went, that didn’t work and that didn’t work. But it was the printing process that revealed more than you could see.
It’s like Instagram is looking at a negative through a light and a print is the final product and it’s going to reveal problems and challenges that you might not catch until you get it into a big, God, make a big print, make a…
13 by 19 or 12 by 18 print and you’re really gonna see, start to see what the problems you’re having with focus or composition. And so I think printing is a really, really good exercise. I mean, even if you bring them to the drug store and start with four by six prints, costs you a few pennies.
you know, a few cents to at least get something physical in your hands and push it around on a table and compare things. It is an important part of the process that I think has fallen away for a lot of photographers in the purely digital world. And it’s valuable, it’s really valuable.
Frederic Paulussen (43:20)
Yeah.
That’s a good advice. It’s something I’ve been looking into as well, but it’s always postponed. But it’s interesting to me that you’re making series, that you’re doing it with prints and not just on a computer, like a Photoshop file, whatever, putting photos together, making your series is an actual physical…
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (43:30)
Yeah.
Absolutely,
yeah, yeah, absolutely. can’t, I can’t, you can’t visually keep track of it all on a computer screen. I mean, if you were to put up pictures from, that you’re developing a project and you had 40 pictures, if you try to put them in one screen, I’m getting older, I need reading glasses. If you put them all up on just a single…
even a large screen, you’re not getting any sense of the broader work of where it’s going, how things relate to each other. You’ve got tiny little thumbnails you’re working with. So get it out on a table, spread it out on the floor, look at it as…
a larger idea, a larger body of work, it’s very valuable. It’s very valuable. And again, it doesn’t, you don’t have to be a master printer. Get them done at the drug store and see what you’ve got. It’s a very revealing process.
Frederic Paulussen (44:47)
Yeah, I was when preparing for his conversation, one question that came to me was she must have ⁓ an amazing amount of photos in her Lightroom catalog and now I’m thinking how many shoeboxes do you have with prints? ⁓
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (45:02)
Plenty,
a lot. I mean, I do throw some out and I kind of categorize them by project, but I’ve got boxes and boxes of four by six prints ⁓ that are a starting place and boxes and boxes of eight by tens that when I want to see them in a bigger format and boxes of big ones, drawers of big ones. ⁓ well, nah.
Frederic Paulussen (45:27)
and you really like organize all your work so you can like go back to 10 years and or
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (45:32)
kind of,
Frederic Paulussen (45:33)
okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (45:35)
in an ideal world. It’s no such thing in reality.
Frederic Paulussen (45:40)
No, yeah, but I was because in my mind it was like her Lightroom catalog must be amazing.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (45:45)
But
there’s a spatial aspect to a print and playing with prints. It also occupies space as opposed to a screen. It’s different. You can look at them in a large space and have a different sort of reaction.
Frederic Paulussen (46:05)
Yeah,
definitely.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (46:05)
than flipping
through on a screen. It’s very different. And listen, I won’t lie, the bulk of the time I spend is on a screen when I’m editing and sorting and deciding and starring and ranking my work is all on a screen. But then when the things that I think are good, that I think are maybe even not so good, is this interesting in a print? Does the print say something different?
It helps you look at your work in a ⁓ broader and more expansive fashion to have some prints to play with. And it makes it real, it makes it tactile, it makes all that work and time an object, a thing.
Frederic Paulussen (46:51)
True, yeah.
I will go, well, I will do it on my screen later today, but I will order some prints for sure. I’m gonna do it.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (46:59)
There are some prints.
The drugstores can get you Snapfish or all sorts of online things. I don’t know in Antwerp and Europe what the services are, but you can get prints cheap and they won’t be great. And trust me, they’ll all be a little dark ⁓ because you’re used to looking at all your photographs backlit, but that’s not how they’re, if you’re ever gonna.
put a print on a wall or make a book or a zine, it’s gonna be in print and you’ve gotta learn how to deal with your work in print in addition to the lights of a backlit screen.
Frederic Paulussen (47:37)
Very true. so earlier you were talking about the ⁓ going to the website of the the opt photographers to see like their new work. Is there a way for you that you now keep well inspired of course with new photographers but maybe also some of the classics. Is there like how do you find your inspiration for your work?
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (48:02)
I’m a book lover and I buy a lot of photography books. And I just think that is the very best way to educate your eye and look at everything. And it’s not just photography, I look at art and I’m a reader, I read a lot, I always have. ⁓ Movies, I think you have to really educate your eye.
Frederic Paulussen (48:05)
See.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (48:27)
And for me, books are a great way to do that and to see how other bodies of work have been pulled together. I tend to like a monograph. I tend to like a book that’s a very thoughtful, meaningful body of work as opposed to kind of the best of or a big survey of a lifetime career. I mean, certainly I have those as well, but I think the books are the…
best way to start. No writer would become a writer if they weren’t also a voracious reader and consumer of literature or, you know.
Frederic Paulussen (49:06)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (49:07)
Great non-fiction, whatever the case may be, my education, I wasn’t educated in photography, I didn’t study photography. ⁓ I started a master’s degree in art history, but my education has come through books that I can buy. And if you can’t afford the books, there are great libraries around. ⁓ Don’t just do it all on Instagram. That’s gonna pull you down.
bring you to places you might not want to go. I mean, there’s an appeal on Instagram to the punchy, the colorful, the light and shadow, the single figure in a street with a lot of great architecture around, and those are very satisfying on Instagram. They garner a lot of attention, but really, they’re not very interesting to me. And so…
Frederic Paulussen (49:55)
No, I see what you’re
saying,
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (49:58)
So you have to avoid that the pull of that with Instagram can be very seductive. And some of the pictures of mine that I like a lot don’t really garner much attention on Instagram because it’s not a good place to take it all in. ⁓ books are, there’s a whole education to be had in photo books. And…
Frederic Paulussen (50:17)
Exactly.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (50:24)
You can only expand your understanding and your visual language and your appreciation of so many things by educating your eye.
Frederic Paulussen (50:35)
Yeah, and also I think with like a book forces you to take your time with a photo like on Instagram it’s easy to scroll by. There are, I’ve made photos that I just know won’t work on Instagram because like the actual subject is so small that you won’t see it on Instagram. And in a print it would be much more interesting. So that’s also why I think books are better because it’s…
it forces you to take the time to look at it and observe the photo.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (51:07)
to bring your own perspective to the book. mean,
to get a new book, does this book work for me? Are the pictures strong? Is the body of work saying something about the world or the photographer or the point of view?
Frederic Paulussen (51:23)
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (51:23)
⁓ And those are all, you have to cast a critical eye on those things and find out what resonates with you. What interests me may not interest you. if it doesn’t appeal to me, it doesn’t mean it’s good. Maybe it just doesn’t hit me in the right place. to, yeah. And so I always say, I talk a lot with my children about books we’re reading and.
Frederic Paulussen (51:42)
Yeah, or at the right time.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (51:51)
One of my daughters will say, well, I just couldn’t, could get into that book at all. It could have been something that I loved. said, well, maybe you’re not, you’re not the right age. It doesn’t speak to you. It doesn’t have to speak to you if I love it. But it’s always an interesting discussion about why. So I’m certain, you know, I’m absolutely certain. You can find the comments online of people who find my work uninteresting and banal and whatever.
Frederic Paulussen (52:09)
True, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (52:21)
⁓ But listen to your critics too because sometimes they have something ⁓ to learn from. Often they do. ⁓ But certainly my work isn’t for everybody and it’s fine by me.
And very often my work isn’t for me. There’s so much failure in what you do and I’m trying to push myself forward and make compelling photographs that only I can make or say something about me. And so I hate most of my own work. So I agree with my critics a lot of the time.
Frederic Paulussen (52:54)
Yeah, yeah.
I followed a workshop in ⁓ May it was and the photographer Chris Harrison told me as well like just make as many photos like photograph everything you find interesting. You have to make a lot of shit just to to find like the three or four gems of the day.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (53:17)
it drives it’s it’s propulsive too if you can be secure enough in yourself to pick yourself up after a bad day and do it again and again and that is what that is That is how you get better. That is how you find what interests you that is it is it’s pick yourself up after a bad day and do it again and do it again and do it again and That is the only way in this genre
Frederic Paulussen (53:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (53:43)
And in most things in life, frankly, ⁓ to get better at something, is just, it’s practice. And you wanna have the passion to drive you towards it, but it’s a lot of failure. And that keeps you humble, which is a good thing.
Frederic Paulussen (53:49)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I always like I give workshops in smartphone photography to, well, it’s mostly to people who are in business, like content marketers and stuff. And also always mentioned, like, if I go to an event for a paid event that I have to photograph for the business, I come home with like 1500 photos, and I’ll only deliver like 100, 150 if it’s a good day. There’s no way to make like one photo and
have it be perfect and it’s also a lot about looking at the crappy photos and thinking about why they’re not good. Like did you miss your timing? Was it a bad subject maybe? Were you not feeling it or whatever? it’s yeah, there’s, think if you go through to most people’s libraries of Lightroom or whatever program you use, you will see 1 % of their photos, maybe.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (55:00)
that were
actually from what were actually taken. Yeah, yeah. I heave ho a lot. I delete a lot at the end of the day. ⁓ I do, I had an issue where I accidentally deleted a whole trip that I had taken to Italy and I only was able to save a few of them. ever since then, I saved my memory cards. So it’s made me…
Frederic Paulussen (55:02)
They were actually good, yeah.
Sorry, you are okay.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (55:30)
It works, it’s a little expensive, but it works for me because I I throw pictures easily so it doesn’t clog my hard drive and I don’t just have such a vast library that it’s intimidating. So I freely delete and pretty quickly things that aren’t working. But I know if there was, it,
if for some reason, I thought, wonder what I took on either side of this more interesting photo, is there something better there? I know I’ve got it in a drawer on a card somewhere and it’s labeled by the date, so I could find all the things that I’ve deleted.
Frederic Paulussen (56:05)
Okay, so you delete the files but you keep all your photos on you buy new cards every time Wow, okay
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (56:09)
on, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And really, actually, what I should do is just take them all and dump them on a huge hard drive. But again, there’s something, maybe it’s a little like from my film days, that you have all those negatives.
Frederic Paulussen (56:24)
Yeah,
to me it’s crazy but at same time it does feel kind of like… it still makes it tangible even though it’s a hard drive. Yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (56:33)
Yeah, what,
and I’m crazed about backing everything up in triplicate. I’ve got a backup drive in my house and I backup drive in the cloud. I, one experience so terrified me that I’ve gotten very good about ⁓ backing up in duplicate or triplicate. So yeah, I’m triplicate. I’ve got my laptop, my desktop, the cards themselves in a cloud backup. hopefully, you know.
Frederic Paulussen (56:52)
That’s very good.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (57:03)
Armageddon. After Armageddon there’ll be something left maybe. Yeah.
Frederic Paulussen (57:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, for me it was an exercise as well to put things in extra hard drives and ask my sister if she could keep those hard drives so in case my place burns down it’s still… But it’s stupid that you have to be so… ⁓
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (57:16)
Yep, yep, yeah, that’s great. Burn down, yep.
But
it’s just, for me it makes things more efficient because I can throw the bad ones more easily. Whereas I used to, ⁓ can I really throw this one away? And I was like, out, out, out. Because really, it’s, a given day, if you get one or two good photos, it’s a good day, really. Sometimes it’s, you know, I’ve had a few days where there might be three good photos, three or four good photos, but, you know, the ones that are gonna last are…
Frederic Paulussen (57:31)
Mm.
Yeah.
True, yeah.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (57:53)
But they’re precious, they’re kind of rare when it all comes together. I I often say, ⁓ I should find a more efficient genre that didn’t require a 10 mile walk for a photo, but this is part of its appeal. It’s difficult. I’m a very determined person. I think part of the appeal for me is that it is so difficult to do well.
Frederic Paulussen (57:56)
Yeah.
I it’s the healthiest art form.
Yeah, that’s for me as well and there are moments only you can capture and it’ll never happen again. You’re the only one who has it, hopefully, that’s the aim. So I think we should wrap up here. ⁓ One thing that will…
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (58:29)
Yeah. Yeah.
Frederic Paulussen (58:41)
I think because of your photos or printed in a book you will have backups all over the world now. Soon one in my house as well. So that’s maybe the best way to back your photos up. So thank you Melissa for your time and insights. If anyone wants to follow her, their links are in the description on no matter what platform you’re listening to. Make sure to follow her amazing photos on Instagram, but of course also on her website.
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (58:46)
Yeah.
Great, thank you.
Frederic Paulussen (59:08)
make sure to buy the book ⁓ now that there’s a second edition and also make sure to follow the podcast of course for ⁓ upcoming updates and again Melissa thank you for for being here
Melissa O’Shaughnessy (59:23)
What a lovely conversation. Thank you, Frederic, it was a great pleasure.