On This Day – 30 June 2007

My ‘On This Day’ series looks back at a photo shot on that exact date in the past. This image is from way back, almost 20 years ago, on 30 June 2007.

A crowd of priests and clergy emerge from St Paul’s Cathedral in central London. Despite what you may think, this quite an unusual scene. I’ve certainly not witnessed this many priests there since.

Where street photography and documentary photography differ, for me, is all about the intention. Documentary photography is very much about objectively photographing a scene to provide answers – very much the who, what, where, when, why?

Street photography is about subjectively photographing a scene, often skewing what is going on, in order to raise questions about it.

So that is why I am usually quite reluctant to talk too much about what may, or may not be going on in a street photo – for fear of the photo losing some of its ‘mystery’ or ‘magic’. All I will say about this image is that it wasn’t a holy conference, news event or religious festival.