What do you see first?
Doll in Backpack, New York, 2025
‘Doll in Backpack’ was one of seventeen pictures exhibited by Albumen Gallery at Photo London in 2025 as part of the series ‘48 hours in New York’ by Robert Watson
What do you see first? I think in this case the answer is pretty obvious. To most people it’s the doll. Its head sticking out of the backpack as if it’s trying to escape from the confines of its temporary prison. Arms reaching out. Uncomfortable in its existence in there as it watches the world pass by. Anxiously waiting to be reunited with its young owner.
What else was there though?
Picture yourself… a street photographer at a busy pedestrian crossing at Bryant Park in New York. You have an instant to notice that there may be a composition, lift the camera and take the picture. As soon as the lights change and the crowd in front moves on, the scene is gone forever and it will be a while before there is time to reflect on the photograph and what it holds. Street photography has a habit of surprises when the picture is finally viewed at a good size. Working with film makes that delay unavoidable, particularly when the photographs are being taken six thousand miles away from your darkroom in the UK.
Personally, this helps me with the way I work.
I had a fraction of a second to compose and take the shot then the scene was gone. The only thing I knew was there was a doll in a backpack on the woman in front of me. What I didn’t completely see was the rest of the picture. Yes, I composed in my head before lifting the camera to take the picture and I knew I was photographing a doll in an unusual predicament but I didn’t see the many other things that make this a great street photograph.
I’m not going to say what they are. That’s up to the viewer to decide. What someone wants to be the focus of a picture is very personal and it may not be the same thing the photographer saw when they pressed the shutter.
Perhaps that is one of the things I like most about street photography. You can think you know what you have photographed, only to discover later that the picture had other ideas. I saw a doll in a backpack. The photograph, it seems, saw rather more.
