The People on the Street

The People on the Street reverses Nigel Shafran's usual position behind the camera: between 2016 and 2017 he approached people sleeping rough in London and Paris and asked each of them to take his photograph.

The resulting pictures are presented unedited and in chronological order, each captioned only with the photographer's name and the location where it was taken. Shot against a homelessness crisis that saw the number of people sleeping rough in London double after 2010, the sequence repeatedly juxtaposes visible poverty with the commercial wealth of the surrounding streets. Shafran self-published the softcover book and directed all proceeds from its sale to homelessness charities.

Shafran has spent three decades photographing the overlooked textures of daily life, from still lifes of domestic clutter to the changing rooms of English department stores; here he turns that same patient, undramatic attention on himself, asking what changes when the photographer hands over control of the image.