Black and white at a chaotic street market
The other day was a holiday in Armenia: Children's Day. Armenia has a strong love for family ties and especially the innocence of children. In some ways this leads to a more wholesome environment, in others it spawns little demons that are seen as incapable of ever doing wrong. Now, there are many holidays and events that take place in Yerevan throughout the summer months, it's when the space really kicks up and springs to life. But I had never seen the city so busy before. I hopped on the bus around midday, heading into the city not expecting much at all. Almost assuming the episode, everyone would be home and relaxing. Instead, every street was riddled with people, every road was at a standstill due to traffic. Never had I seen Yerevan's streets so packed.
Every street had been decorated, every street had some sort of events going on. Even outside my apartment in my residential district I immediately noticed the chaos and sheer density of people. I knew there were various markets and little decorations propping up throughout the city a few days before, I just had no idea it was all connected under one massive holiday. I walked through a market and photographed a few of the stalls, it was quite dark at this point so the most light around was directly inside the markets. The people around, the noise, all the music and chatter. The life around was intense. And the heat of a warmer spring (going into summer) evening could really be felt here. Especially from all the stalls cooking and heating up food to be sold.
I didn't really have much intention of shooting anything at this point, given how dark it was, but I lately I've wanted to shoot 35mm film and had just managed to run out. That itch to shoot things remained, so I carried the digital around a bit in hopes of maybe capturing that same fun feeling I had been the days prior. I also felt a bit more cautious here, one thing I'm very much afraid of still is photographing the wrong types of people given Armenians are still not quite familiar with the street photography concept. It means I must be more selective with how and where I point the camera. These spaces tend to be more relaxed, more where people expect to see cameras and are less likely to say anything; however again it was Children's Day of all things.
I have noticed that lately I'm far more interested in people and photographing them though. Not so much in the usual artistic portrait sense, but more the street sense. Noticing the unique details of a person. Their features, their emotions, the way they dress. I find the way people interact within shared spaces quite interesting too, the many little stories and events unfolding all at the same time, different paths connected within a space despite nobody really paying much attention to one-another. It's something I definitely want to explore more with the camera, again preferably on 35mm film stock and less digitally.
