Robert Poole

I discovered Walter Rothwell’s work through the fantastic magazine The Inspired Eye  who were kind enough to feature both of our photography in their magazine and on their blog.

Walter combines two of my favourite things in photography. The Hassleblad X-pan and street Photography. If any of you don’t know, the X-pan is a panoramic camera made actually by Fuji for Hassleblad which exposes two 35mm frames to give a panoramic image and utilises rangefinder focusing.

Now to this image. It immediately drew my eye when looking through Walter’s work as it isn’t your traditional ‘street’ photo as there are no people. But that’s exactly what makes it street photography! Confused? Me too. Let’s break it down. There is a lone chair and a sign that says disabled. The chair is abandoned, lost in negative space one leg missing. It’s a disabled chair, the absence of people makes this street photography. Chairs are for sitting on but this chair has been discarded and forgotten the same fate as wr sadly assign to the disabled all too often.

There are technical aspects on framing ‘wrong’ with this picture of course but who cares? The box is slightly truncated, the pole on the right is intrusive but the message makes these disappear.

Walter has agreed to share some of his darkroom secrets so more of that to come in the future hopefully!

Check out his website with more of his fantastic work here