Passenger Seat
By Liz Kaufman
26 Jun 2008
It's my curse that I see so much more of the world constantly riding in the passengers seat of a car without being able to stop, rewind. The roads I take every other day are second nature to anyone else but me. I enjoy looking in people's open backyards and through the windows of houses. There are milliseconds between houses, but after passing them so many times, I practically have each one memorized. I take pleasure in the little things.
A yellow house with peeled paint is one of the most beautiful things on the long stretch of Jefferson Road. Three cars piled on top of each other behind a barb-wired fence. An old woman in a black and pink shirt down to her knees chain smoking on her front porch. A homeless man walking into a McDonalds, taking a bite out of a banana. I see more photographs than I have actually captured and nothing has bothered me more.
I've found it difficult not having a car in college. I've managed to get around by catching rides with close friends and acquaintances, riding in the passenger seat of their cars. It was heart-breaking to pass through neighborhoods and business districts without being able to drop and roll out of the car and photograph the many faces and strange subtleties we passed. I soon discovered that I was the only one that saw them. I would mumble, "god, what a great shot" and the driver would never get a chance to see what I was talking about.
I began to take my Rolleiflex along for each ride and stop to photograph the various houses, signs, people, and sidewalk leftovers. I took my time when photographing, and was hassled once or twice, but I almost always came away knowing I had at least one shot on my roll. I used a light meter in all shooting conditions and had to use my spot meter when I was too far away.
It hasn't been easy to work on this project and there have been many drawbacks. Sometimes it's pouring rain and the shot is difficult to focus through a waist-level viewfinder. Other times, the subject is too far away and I have to step onto someone else's property in order to capture exactly what I want. When I see something I like, I must photograph it, and when I can't photograph it, I always go back and try again. There is so much that I see that I want everyone else to see and it frustrates me to think that I may never be able to capture it all. The hardest part of my project is that most everything I see out the window is fleeting. People don't sit on their stoops for as long as I want, old houses don't stay erect through the winter season, and road kill is swept off the streets within hours of the accident. People don't like having their portrait taken as much as they used to. The internet has changed us all and it has changed photography drastically. We all value our privacy and eventually society will completely dismiss street photography.
I used to hate not having a car where I lived and now I enjoy every moment of it. I hope to expand this project into something much more than just photographing the greater Rochester area. It's nearly impossible for me to travel as a full time student and I can barely afford traveling back home to California in the summer. Someday I hope I will be able to sit in the passenger seat of cabs in New York City, rickshas in Asia, gondolas in Italy, and tuk-tuks in Thailand.
This is an ongoing project that I will continue to develop for as long as I can. For more information on my Passenger Seat project, you can contact me at lizhkaufman@gmail.com or check out my website at Lizhkaufman@gmail.com.
