Photographing passersby from behind is the easiest move in street photography: I’ve done it myself. But I quickly realized that it’s the first habit to break if you want to go beyond casual snapshots, no matter how uncomfortable that might feel.

Now I choose the uncomfortable honesty of facing a “composition” head-on, but always with respect for privacy, through an abstract approach. That’s my experiment and my ethics.

This experiment later led to my Fstoppers article, Is It the End of Street Photography as a Genre?, which sparked a wider debate about the changing ethics of street photography. The questions it raised have since entered the practice of other photographers.