Richard Sandler: What Street Photography Has Lost Today

Richard Sandler joins Eyeshot 50mm for a raw conversation on New York street photography, film, flash, eye contact, documentary filmmaking, and what it means to photograph the unrehearsed human face. One of the defining street photographers of late 20th-century New York, Sandler reflects on photographing the city in the 1980s, working with Leica cameras and flash, learning from Gary Winogrand, dealing with risk, rejection, the technique of two pictures in one frame, the same technique he once taught a young Bruce Gilden, and the presence of the photographer in the frame. He speaks about why he never wanted to be invisible, why eye contact can reveal something deeply human, and why the best photographs often ask more questions than they answer. Direct, funny and uncompromising, a portrait of a photographer who never stopped questioning what he was looking at.