Photography: Peter Funch | Babel Tales.

Here's my second NYC post in three days. Hmmm ... maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

Danish photographer Peter Funch (pronounced "funk") posts up on the same spot on city sidewalks and takes pictures of New Yorkers. Okay, nothing special there. But then he fires up Photoshop and does something undeniably awesome.

For a series entitled "Babel Tales", he photographs people who are similar in some sort of way -- flower-carriers, smokers, black-clad business people, even children -- and placed all of them into the same picture. Peep skills:


This is brilliant and hilarious stuff.

However, in a discussion about "Babel Tales" in Flickr's Hardcore Street Photography group, some people derided Funch's work as having "the same ... boring-ass cliches", being "one step away at most from advertising photography" and not being "honest [enough] in its untruthfulness" (WTF does that even mean?). People need to fall back with that. I can see how some might call it "gimmicky" but by the same token, so is bokeh and HDR. You can't front like this didn't involve some fair amount of talent behind both the lens and the keyboard. To my amateur eyes, this series is quite original, well-executed and technically seamless. I view it as a playful, entertaining exercise in capturing people on the right day in the right moment and, if you wanna stretch it, a study in human nature.

Make sure your Photoshop Selection Tool game is strong if you want to emulate this.