Alex Webb

Traditional photojournalists arrive with an idea of what they are going to produce or what the editor wants. I approach a subject very much as a street photographer and a wanderer, without preconceptions. I try to leave it extremely intuitive and exploratory.

Ultimately, the reward is the process - the process of photographing and discovering and trying to understand why and what am I photographing.

I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner.

In the mid 1970's, I began to be drawn towards places of cultural tension: borders, the edges of societies, worlds that have been transformed by an outside -- often northern -- culture. I was intrigued by the rawness, the tensions, and the emotional immediacy of the streets in these places.

Three years after my first trip to Haiti, I realized there was another emotional note that had to be reckoned with: the intense, vibrant color of these worlds. Searing light and intense color seemed somehow embedded in the cultures that I had begun working in, so utterly different from the gray-brown reticence of my New England background. Since then, I have worked predominantly in color.