C'est La Vie in BW at the SF Leica Store

So last Thursday night I went on Sf to catch the gallery opening of Vladimir Panasenko, a long time street photographer of many many years who primary can be found on Market street" in Sf taking photos or the world around him. Up until a few weeks ago I had never heard of him let alone seen his work. After a few google searches I quickly figured out that 1)that his work was a lot better then mine (duh). 2) he's been shooting for a few decades. 3) His work is pretty raw, meaning he doesn't suger coat his work in any way shape or form. 4) What the hell did he do to those M2 Leica's he shoots on?

As usual I brought along a camera, actually it was 2. I didn't shoot too much this time around, but mainly wanted to shoot the rest of a roll I had in the M3 and wanted to use my favorite unused lens the MS Optical 50mm f1.1 Sonnetar. I was able to shoot a few cells after getting off BART and running into a pretty decent violin player at work Busking in BART atrium. 10 minutes later I was SF Leica and run into a few faces I knew. After a 5 or so minutes I had a chance to see two of Vlad's M2's that the gallery had on display. Vlad apparently likes de-chrome his Leica's and then modify them and the lenses he uses. Most of the time he he shoots as quickly as possible, so this means zone shooting. He also added a small timming belts to the lenses so he he can feel the modified belts for distance. It oddly made sense. He also liked to modify and name his cameras and the two he had on display were "Mickey and Minnie." Afterwards it was time to see the silver gelatine prints. All were full frame and in groupings of subjects. So the first group was "women at work" series of street shots with most shot on various 50mm lenses. His work was very good, but didn't quite reach technical level of Winogrand. Winogrand's ability to get close and use wider angle lenses brought more of sense of intimacy to his work, while the longer 50mm work had more of a hunt feel to it. That also having been said, Vlad was far daring when it came to subject matter and wasn't afraid to show life along Market street as dirty as he could find it. From very out of the closet gay S&M partners out for a stroll, to drug addicts and prostitution.

Afterwards a few of us took in a drinks at Irish Bank just down the street. For more info try Here or better yet, go into SF Leica and see the prints