Jarred Gastreich: Street Smarts

Pretty much everybody in the U.S. has a smart phone, which means pretty much everybody has a camera on them at all times. Does that make America a nation of photographers? Despite the number of Instagram shots being taken in restaurants at this very instant, the answer is assuredly "no." Technique, not equipment, makes the photographer. Jarred Gastreich is a street photographer whose work prominently features people, so it was almost inevitable that he would capture images of people using their phones. Gastreich, who pioneered the RFT's "The Lede" column in 2015, used his own phone to capture people messing about on their phones as a means of exploring how smart phones are changing the urban landscape. (The recent Pokemon Go mania, he admits, has been a great boon to his work.) Street Scapes shows the fruits of his labors, and reveals his fine sense of composition and timing.