During the early days of French modernist thought, Baudelaire created the concept of the flâneur. The emphasis of the flâneur was placed on the paradoxical notion of attachment to space but detachment from community – the wealthy, sharply dressed man who strolled through the streets of Paris observing but not engaging with the crowd of passers by. Baudelaire was speaking about the man of privilege whose affluence allowed him to while away his days in this way, noting his observations of the masses for his own pleasure, intellectualizing and using them as the contents for his narratives.

Soho Street Shoots modernizes this idea – we emphasize the relationship between people, place and culture. As much as we like to observe the crowd, we also like to engage with it so we stopped and photographed some of Soho’s everyday people who were going about their daily business in order to create a shared cultural experience. We also want to share this experience with you, so over the next few days we will be posting material from our Soho Street Shoots Series.

Photos by Ki Price Words by Ray Kinsella

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