Photographing Strangers on the Street: Candid & Posed with Amy Touchette

Drop by the on May 2nd at 5 pm to be in the audience in person or jump into the chat to ask your questions and say hello to your fellow photographers live on the

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If you’re compelled to take people’s portraits on the street, but you don’t know how to go about it, or it intimidates you, or you just want to deepen your experience taking pictures of strangers, come to this event. Brooklyn-based street portrait photographer Amy Touchette discusses the various methodologies used by street photographers, practical aspects of photographing strangers, and the psychology behind getting the portrait you envision, including how and why to embrace fear, the role the mind-body connection plays, how to gain strangers’ trust (quickly), and how to recover when things take a turn for the worse. 

Photographer, Amy Touchetter

Amy Touchette is a photographer based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, who explores themes of social connectedness through street portraiture. She was trained at the International Center of Photography, where she now teaches, and her photographs have exhibited and been published internationally, including at the MoMA-Moscow and in The New York Times and Artsy. One of 100 photographers profiled in the book Women Street Photographers (Prestel, 2021), BuzzFeed called her a “master of street photography in the busiest of concrete jungles, New York City.” Touchette’s second monograph, Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn (Schilt Publishing, 2022), was short-listed for the Lucie Photo Book Award and garnered a Critical Mass 2021 Top 50. Photographs from the book have exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, in “In Praise of Shadow Boxers, Dissonance & Dissidents,” a tribute to Greg Tate at Lincoln Center, in Photoville’s “The Brooklyn Connection” curated by Jamel Shabazz, and elsewhere. Her first monograph, Shoot the Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB*, (Un-Gyve Press, 2013) was featured in various media, including la repubblica, Esquire Magazine, and Vogue Italia. She’s represented by Clamp in NYC and Little Big Galerie in Paris, France. 

For a look at her candid, un-posed portraits of strangers (made with her iPhone), follow amy_touchette on Instagram.

To view her posed, formal portraits of strangers (made with her Rolleiflex), go to www.amytouchette.com. 

All photos are the property of Amy Touchette.

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