For most of the cases I have trust in the french constitution that protects our freedom in artistic and cultural expression. But there are some cases that might cause problems. Intimate photos (a couple kissing… what if it was an illegitime one with the consequences we might guess.) or pictures of kids. I stay away from this kind of photos. I’m very respectful of the people I photograph.

Hi Jeff. Never a problem with replies.
It’s bloody impossible to obtain model releases with Street/Life photography…that’s ridiculous!! No one bothers with it, no one has ever bothered with it… least not the actual subjects, I doubt they could care less and if anyone ever did then you’d just remove the photo from wherever it’s being displayed. Your project in particular, “Tourist in the City”, what do they expect?? You’d need to be fluent in 20 different languages to start with…crazy! No law that I know of says you can’t take photos of people in the street. I suppose if they suddenly appeared on advertising Billboards across the globe there might be a case.
Our hands project was a bit of a failure, I certainly didn’t come up with anything. Photography is a lone wolf occupation in any case. That Tim Booth book link was just for interest, obviously not your style at all. Most of those hands in his work are of reasonably famous Brits. I thought he did a good job.

I’ve been lazy lately… sorry for the late reply :/. Well in fact not really lazy, but I had a lot of things to do. Work and other things. The other thing has to deal with this series “Tourist in the city” that I finally will be proposing to a festival. I have to document myself on the image rights because they asked me to sign a document saying that “I recognize having the authorization of the people being photographed….”. Well it’s the same thing on my website. I share on my website, on my FB pictures of perfect strangers. But it’s a bit different now. I can’t sign something like that. I called and told them that I would need to reformulate the whole thing. Let’s see if my series will be accepted. Our constitution gives us a free artistic expression. I will definitely make a Blog on that…
This series has a lot of gestures as well. I’m sucker for these moments in the streets. You should start again your project on the hands. I’d like to see what you came up with. Projects don’t need to have an end. As you say, they’re just here to give us some focus when needed.
I had a look to Tim Booth’s work. Even if it’s not my way of working, his photographs are pretty impressive and powerful. Love this work on the textures

Thanks a lot for these quotes Vasco. The process of finding projects or series within ones work as Bryan said, can lead you to a totally different result. That’s what happened to the Series “Fragments”. I still have pleasure to roam randomly in the streets of Aix-en-Provence. But having these projects in mind, help me focus when I’m lacking inspiration.
Cheers mate !

Your City Tourists theme could double up as a “Hands” theme by the way. Looking forward to seeing the “Hands Tale” publication. Myself and three other photographers tried a collaborative project based on Hands, between the four of us we couldn’t come up with anything very good. There’s a photographer called Tim Booth did a book called “Show of Hands”, worth having a look through the images if you have time https://www.timbooth.com/portfolio_category/a-show-of-hands/ . I thought it was very well thought out and presented.
Thanks for the mention Jeff, I doubt anyone could be inspired by me…they can at least see how not to do it 😉

Congrats for sharing once more your thoughts and doubts about Photography. They are part of the evolution process of the concerned photographer.

Curiously I was reading the words of Bryan Formhals (co-author of the book: “Photographer’s Sketchbooks”) and I sent you some passages because they seems interesting and has a lot to do with what you wrote.

“Any serious photographer will inevitably arrive at a discussion about projects. This is the point when photography moves beyond the single image into the world of narrative and bigger ideas. “…“A Project is typically a series (1) of photographs that are held together by a theme. Planning and research are required before starting; others discover projects only during the editing process”… “ The photographer needs to be passionate about the subject, needs to have a discipline and patience to pursue the Project over a long period of time”… “It is advisable to receive feed-back from trusted sources, such as friends or teachers”… “ A fresh set of eyes will help and this process will frequently be repeated many times”… “ A good starting point is simply to look at the topics and subject matter that interests”… “Once has been started, it often evolves and expands in unplanned directions”… “ Each Project will have its natural progression and there will likely be times when it is beneficial to step away, because time can change one´s perspective”… “While it might not be wise to make all your creatives choices solely on the basis of how many “likes” you received, sharing projects-in-progress does allow the photographer to discover which photographs and ideas resonate with an audience”… “ The answers can normally be found directly in your life, so look around, and get started”.

(1) “A series is structured around a theme or story. So the relationship of terms is such, that each successive term, is derived from the one preceding it by application of a specific principle. A sequence is not around a theme and is structured by allowing one image to follow another by an order of presentation which is not apparently thematic or systematic.” – Keith Smith

Cheers.

VT