STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Alex Coghe


Photography, art in general, is close to freedom only when we manage
to bring it to our innermost being. The more I photograph the more I
know myself. Photography is not a matter of form for me, I am
interested in it's content. The content should not necessarily be
revelation - or even worse, didacticism. Im not a photographer from
Yosemite ParkI dont fucking care about the technical celebration.
Photography for me is not a matter of tonal range. For me it is instinct,
the ability to capture fragments, or being able to move through the
images with my own state of mind.

Didactic photography is terribly boring. My photography doesnt want
to be reassuring. I live in a Mexican barrio, why should I photograph
sunsets and flowers? I do photograph flowers, but even these are
through a dark eyeso that I find les fleurs du mal.My photography is
not supposed to look beautiful. Im not even interested in the
compositionI feel indeed that I must improve on this I want to be
dirtier. The image is the thing that matters. The process is not
important, but the idea - that is crucial. I smile mockingly when
someone talks about originality. What is originality? Yet another portrait
is original? A new shot in the street? Everything is reinterpretation.
Everything is reproduction in photography. Decoding is the key. Or, if
you prefer, the filter. The photographer through his experience and his
cultural heritage is that filter. SureI am not talking about technique.
Thats a concept that I leave to monkeys with a camera, or the ghost of
Ansel Adams.

I think Charles Bukowski is more important for me than Henri
Cartier-Bresson. There are no rules for the visual inspiration. Even if
someone is always trying to create them.
There is no reality in photography. There may be realism, but not
reality. I can only try to collect portions, fragments of reality. It is
through this consciousness that I create images. The image of an
image is another image. Rewritten, regenerated, renewed. A new
image. A new fragment of reality.

Alex Coghe 2013

FOREWORD BY MICHAEL ERNEST SWEET

Immediately, when we look at photographs by Alex Coghe we think of Daido
Moriyama, and Shomei Tomatsu before him. Clearly, Coghe has studied this
school of Japanese photography and has acquired the aesthetic. Like Moriyama
and Tomatsu, Coghe is on a quest to discover the reality around him; to untangle
our world and then blur it all out again.


When we study these photographs we see both reality and the unreal all at
once. The very first image in this book is of a man entering an elevated subway a few pages later, another man leaving one - what could be more real, more
familiar? At the same time, when we look at these images our mind wants to
wander from that reality. We know what we are looking at, and yet, we are looking
at something unusual, something abstract also. This is the very appeal that is
found in the photographs throughout Nasty.


But we don't only see the Japanese photographers at work in Coghe's
photographs, we are also reminded of the banality of Eggleston's work and of the
fragments of Mark Cohen's photography. At first glimpse, some people may
accuse Coghe of merely copying, but of course that is not what is at play. Coghe
does not copy, he engages, he participates in a conversation between the
generations of photographers, he adds to that conversation and does so in a way
so as not to be forgotten. This, of course, is the purest form of photographic
innovation - informed but unique, familiar but fresh.


Some of the images in this book are so fragmented and full of grit and grain that
only the wildest of imaginations might construct definite meaning from their
abstractions. This is not a negative. Photography has every right to be engaged in
the abstract, it is part and parcel to the very art of constructing an image. Coghe
employs this masterfully throughout this volume taking us on a wild roller coaster
of detachment and even daydreaming before snapping us harshly back to reality
over and over again. It's thrilling. It's exhilarating. It's Nasty.


As an avid collector of the likes of Moriyama and Cohen, as well as a
photographer from this very school myself, I welcome Coghe's work into the
contemporary photographic world with open arms. The photographs between
these covers deserve not only to be indeed between these very covers, but also
among the finest collections of contemporary books of photography. Alex Coghe's
work will endure. It is dark, but honest. It is blurred, but real. It is fragmented, but
complete.


Nasty is a clear departure from the sameness that plagues contemporary
photography. I am tired of all the perfect photographs. Technical perfection is
greatly overrated and nothing more than merely a product of the abundance of
technology now at our disposal as photographers. But what of the subject matter
or the larger narrative? These fundamentals are lost on too many of the emerging
photographers at work today. We see an endless stream of "perfect
photographs", but they lack story, they lack fresh subject matter, and they lack
true innovation - they are void of voice. This is not so with Nasty. This volume of
photography not only speaks, it adds something new. And something new, when
it comes to art, is the ultimate achievement.

Michael Ernest Sweet
New York, New York

If your street photographs arent good enough, youre not living the street enough.




I really hope this book will be an inspiration to get out and take pictures in the street


Alex Coghe, 2014









All rights reserved - ALEX COGHE 2014

http://www.alexcoghe.com/


2014 STREET PHOTOGRAPHY - AN IDEA BY ALEX COGHE - ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
2014, ALEX COGHE

Self publishing contact: alex@alexcoghe.comALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book
contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and
Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Alex Coghe

To my family and friends who support me.

Thanks to you this dream continue .

http://www.alexcoghe.com/