Cary Lindley didn’t start out as a street photographer.
The retired schoolteacher, who hails from Houston, has taken his photography hobby to the streets of Bayfield, Durango and around the Southwest, chronicling the interesting people he comes across and putting the photos on a series of Facebook pages – Bayfield Colorado 2025 (which he plans to take down soon), Faces of Durango and Portrait Outlaw.
On the net
Check out photographer Cary Lindley’s Facebook pages:
Faces of Durango: https://www.facebook.com/FacesOfDurango
Portrait Outlaw: https://www.facebook.com/portraitoutlaw
Bayfield Colorado 2025 (will soon be taken down): https://www.facebook.com/BayfieldColorado2025
A cruise through all three pages offers black-and-white photographs as diverse as the people who frequent the area: Lindley has captured images of cowboys, people at work, tourists, buskers, people in restaurants and, on the Portrait Outlaw page, a man he met at a gas station who has the longest, most luxurious beard as well as piercing eyes.
Lindley said the street-photography projects began last year when he was living in Bayfield. He said he was growing tired of the pictures he had been taking.
“I’ve been photographing barns and old trucks, the mountains, all the beautiful scenery, the old mines and stuff like everyone else,” he said. “I’ve been doing that off and on for eight years, since I retired, and every time I after I did it, well, it was fun, it was nice, but just nothing that meaningful to me, just another pretty photo.”
Watching a documentary about street photography piqued his interest, and like many of us do when we want to learn something new, he took to the internet to do some digging around. On YouTube, he found New York-based street photographer Paul Baldonado’s – Paulie B’s – series “Walkie Talkie.”
And Lindley was inspired.
“I just tried to take what I learned there and do it my way,” he said. “Because mainly street photography is taking candid shots, whether you’re photographing scenes or people; you’re not asking permission, you’re just out there. (Photographers) can be very aggressive, but that’s in New York. We’re not in New York, and so I didn’t want to be aggressive, but I thought it looked challenging and fun.”
While the series offered valuable tips about approaching strangers, Lindley said his experience as a schoolteacher put him ahead of the game: He was used to talking to parents and students, so he wasn’t bothered by that aspect. In fact, he enjoys the challenge and the people he meets, he said.
“It started working in Bayfield, and I got to have a lot of conversations with people I would have otherwise never met had I not stopped and asked to take their photo,” he said.
Do people ever say no when he asks to take their photo?
“Not near as much as I thought,” Lindley said. “I would say 95 percent of the people I ask say yes. Now, I don’t ask everybody, because I do take some candid shots from time to time, especially when the weather is nice.”
As for the people he picks, he said when he first began street photography, he’d take photos of anybody he crossed paths with. But now that the number of portraits he’s taken is beginning to stack up, he’s being a little more judicious when he chooses his subjects.
“I look for people that don’t look like myself, basically because I look just like an old, boring schoolteacher,” Lindley said. “So whether they have a beard or they have a cowboy hat or something that’s just a different style about them ... I’m getting pickier, because as the numbers start to add up, I’ve started telling people not to smile in the photos – to look serious, look mad, anything but the cheesy smile, because all my pictures started looking the same.”
Lindley also subscribes to the Japanese philosophy of “wabi-sabi” he discovered through photographer Tatiana Hopper. It’s the idea that a photograph doesn’t have to be technically or artistically perfect, it just needs to capture a moment in time – a moment that will never, and can’t ever, be replicated. He said it really hit home for him on his yearlong Bayfield project, when one of the oldest couples he photographed died and the family contacted him and asked if they could use the photos.
“I found out that my project, the pictures don’t have to be perfect. They don’t even have to really be that good,” he said. “The fact is, I’m documenting things that are changing every day. And you know, every image, as (Hopper) says, it’s sort of a farewell, because it can’t be repeated. ... Every moment is precious and passing, and so are people. ... It’s only by chance that we cross paths. Every picture I post is unique; it’s for that moment. And I get to have a conversation with a stranger that probably I would have otherwise never talked to.”
And while we’re living in a world that can feel as if we’re being pitted against each other, and doom scrolling is only adding to our collective anxiety, Lindley said he hopes looking through his pages can give people a renewed sense of community, even in these difficult times.
“There’s a lot of wonderful people out there, and you look at the photos and you can see that,” he said. “The fact is, the news itself is so depressing and so dividing of everything, but me out there on the street with my camera, taking photos of people from all walks of life, they all have one thing: They’re good people. I want people to look at that and smile when they see all these people that are in their community, and know that Durango is a special place, just like Bayfield is a special place. If you’ll follow my page, you can see that life is full of good things and there’s good people, and good things are happening every day in this town and everywhere. We just don’t always get a chance to see it.”
katie@durangoherald.com
