By Joshua Singavarapu
December 4, 2017
Street photographers live in the shadows. They hope that you never see them as they get uncomfortably close and follow you through the streets. Frank Multari is a member of the NYC Street Photography Collective. Born in the Bronx and raised in Tennessee, Multari currently works in the camera section of B&H and lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
One freezing Friday afternoon, I followed him during a two hour long trek he took along Broadway. Seeing the excitement on Multari’s face as he told me about the pictures he was taking helped me understand how much he loves photography.
Frank Multari: I fell in love with cinematography by watching films and noticing composition and things of that nature. I began by manipulating images from Google on PhotoShop. Initially, I wanted a camera so that I could have more resolution to manipulate with. My aunt had an old, broken Leica Camera that she gave me which I ended up selling to buy a digital Nikon camera.
I’m originally from New York but I partly grew up down South. When I started photography I was doing portraits of my more attractive friends. But I always wanted to move back to New York because it just really sucked in Tennessee. Once I found photography it took me eight months to leave and go to New York. Initially, the idea was to do more portraiture but when I arrived I was drawn to the streets so that’s what I do now.
In the beginning I did a lot of research on what kind of camera I wanted to get and what kind of gear I wanted to use. Part of what helped me decide was going onto Flickr and looking at other people’s photography and seeing what kind of gear they were using. I remember initially debating between the 35 millimeter and 50 millimeter lens but in the end I ended up going with the 35. And ever since I stuck with that.
New York City has the advantage of population density. I tried to shoot in Los Angeles in the beginning of the year and I ended up mounting my camera onto my rental car and I took pictures of people on the sidewalk with my trigger as I drove past them. L.A. is so expansive that to walk is really impossible. You could walk down a huge half a mile block and see one person. So there is definitely an advantage in doing street photography here in New York City than in other places.
The pictures that us photographers take are going straight onto Instagram. Instagram has become THE VENUE. It is the place where everyone is putting their work. People are conscious of the feedback that they are getting but there is an agreement amongst photographers that the best pictures do not necessarily play on Instagram. This is because of the small phone screens which make the photograph lose its “hook.”
My first gig was shooting a band. There was another guy too who was shooting the band and he had this big Canon camera with this huge zoom lens and his camera looked much more impressive than mine. But, he was basically standing in one place with this camera and took photos and I had this little set up with my small camera and my prime lens and I was all over the place taking photos. In the end, the band ended up going with my photos and that gave me encouragement as a photographer. I learned that a prime lens with a single focal length hones a certain vision and makes you more creative in your composition. Recently though, I have been experimenting with Nikon’s 58 millimeter lens because I’ve become restless and want to try something new.
I grew up in the Bronx and was always aware of Broadway. I also lived in Westchester, in the area called Sleepy Hollow, which is actually where Broadway terminates. Broadway is so interesting because it’s part of I-9, Interstate Route 9, which starts in Delaware and runs all the way to Canada. The idea that you could walk from Westchester and end up in the bottom of Manhattan and see the different neighborhoods which you passed by was something which inspired me.
Interviewer: Do you realize the underlying meanings in the pictures that you take while you are taking the picture or does that happen only after you sit down and look at the photograph?
Frank Multari: I always ask myself: “Why am I drawn to this?” “Why am I taking the photo?” That’s a really difficult question because the entirety of photography has been done before. The entire thing with the evidence of man in nature and the incongruity of photos have all been done before.
I feel like I owe the people I photograph a lot. The thing that is different about photography from painting or something else is that it is not just something coming from me. I mean whether or not a photographer is an artist is something that photographers themselves widely disagree on. There is a line in street photography between editor and photographer. And the person has a lot to do with it. I mean there are people in this city that have been photographed a lot. Like that guy in Washington Square Park who is lounging back with the sun visor with something in his mouth and I think to myself: “I took that picture years ago.” And I see that picture from more than one photographer. There is one lady who, forgive me, is fairly disheveled and she has this makeup on and she has just been in a ton of photographers’ work.
There are a few photographers whom I have looked up to. The photographer Gary Winogrand has had a big influence on me. Also Arthur Tress, who in the 60s or 70s did this black and white series with children. Very surreal stuff. Another influence is Philip diCorcia. Both Tress and diCorcia took pictures that had a lot of ambiguity. You had to ask yourself, “Was it a real street picture or was it staged?’ I’ve also been influenced by Mark Cohen, who got really, really close to challenging subjects like children. Photographers like these took some of the more scarier pictures.
I often ask myself, “What is the purpose?,” “What is the point?” I honestly cannot answer it. I have always been inclined to create. I started writing, I got into some music. But not until photography did I feel like I found something that came naturally and that I excelled at.
But with street photography, on a more philosophical level, “What am I accomplishing?” “What am I attributing?” Probably nothing. Photography is something that is easy to get into but it is very hard to make a good picture and to find good reason. It is something that I am still trying to figure out. I want to make work that is original, I want it to be meaningful, and I do not want to hurt people or make them uncomfortable. It is difficult to balance all these things. I suppose that if I make pictures people enjoy then it is a positive thing. I just don’t want to contribute to all of the shitty pictures that are out there, and there are so many mediocre pictures that are being put out. If anything, I want to contribute to quality and push other people to do good stuff too. More and more photography is becoming a part of a community where you can make friends and push each other to do better and just talk. I guess that’s mostly it.