Every holiday season we honor Patricia Fogarty by running her past posts she shared with us on Monochromia. Patti was one of our original seven contributors when we started Monochromia back in 2014. We will be sharing Patti’s posts starting today and running them through New Years day. I hope you enjoy seeing these great images again. Patti was a great street photographer, writer and a dear friend. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t think of some of the laughs we shared when I went into Manhattan to do some street shooting with her. I miss you Patti but your images and great personality will live forever in my mind !

More of Patti’s work can be seen at her Instagram feed – here

It would give me every amount of pleasure to say I picked up the photography bug through the childhood influences of a parent, friend or relative who owned a half decent camera, let alone a dark room or even the tickle of the bug.  Economic circumstances limited my childhood photographic experiences. Film and its development were luxuries, clicks to be taken on special occasions, our family photos almost all a set of poses.  Yet my memories of such photos all belong outside the frame, to events before and after.  How cute we were, sitting on the grass dressed in our Sunday best in the grounds of the hospital where my father took us to visit my sad, unhappy mother.

That was then.  It was also a time when photojournalists sent shots over the wire of hyper-reality, from a man bouncing about on the moon to the burning highways of Vietnam and everything in between.  Every expression, every feeling known to man, woman and child. Photography could be an adventure, a learning experience, a window into life, anything we wanted it to be. I so wanted to be a part of it.

This is now.  After years of recording family adventures, smiles, tears, the whole kit and caboodle on film, I finally moved to digital along with a move from London to New York. Where I knew no-one. Where I now walk the streets shooting people.  Where with my camera I am never lonely.

Through the digital process and my accumulation of posts on Tumblr I have been so grateful to have connected with so many talented photo-bloggers and I thank Joe from The Visual Chronicle for the invitation to be part of this exciting adventure. With the play of light and shadow, the intriguing visuals of Black & White photography lure us in to absorb and reflect.  To make of it what we will.  To make it our own.

Or so we hope, but then, what is the fun of photography without hope!