Steven Hirsch

The endless winter has reluctantly departed and we search eagerly for the signs of summer. One sign is photographer and native New Yorker Steven Hirsch taking to the city streets, his visual creativity flowing like sap. Variously employing fast color or black-and-white films, wide angle lenses or off camera flash, Steven has spent over twenty-five years capturing life on the city streets. His compositions are a telling social commentary on the last decades of the twentieth century.
A keen observer of the passing parade of humanity, Steven's photographs depict what urban dwellers unconsciously rush by in their daily existence - a variety of people whose activities, dress or demeanor make them all but invisible in the crowd. Steven Hirsch's subjects become even more important than geometric patterns or elements in the composition. His visual insights provide contiguous, whimsical or synchronistic interpretations that go beyond superficial social observations.
Cities, which by definition are full of strangers and the seductive safety of anonymity, lure Steven; their energies provide his greatest resource. His instinctive photos capture the stop-action split-seconds of the life of the street. Steven has taken his unique perspective with him when traveling to other cities such as London and Paris where again, using the neutral gritty palette of the urban venue as a backdrop, he searches and finds all the bright pinpoints of color and people that make his photographs cohesive, successful and alluring.
Where the framing is everything, architects have nothing on Steven - his photographs are constructed with modular shapes and forms that incorporate modern and post-modern design elements. His placement of his subjects and use of flash delineate them with a hard edge that lends extra dimensionality and makes them move within the frame. Whether the influence be Alfred Hitchcock (with the cinematic and Gothic quality of the photos taken in London or Paris), or the visual references to Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand or William Klein in Steven's New York photos; all have a bit of mystery.
Steven Hirsch teaches photography and works as a freelancer for the New York Post where he has created his dream job photographing "perp walks," fires and the political and social milieu. Hirsch's cutting edge photos crystallize the contemporary street theater, much as Weegee did decades ago. In keeping with Steven's view of retro-reportage people are brought to the light of examination but not ridicule. His pictures continue to explore and define the landscape of the city and appear as a sociological document that can withstand the test of time.