Flashback Friday: Orthodox Jewish Weddings from the 80s #2

Jewish wedding, New York area, 1985. © Mason Resnick

Second in a series. 

Back in the 1980s, as I was becoming religious, my Orthodox Jewish friends started to get married, and some of them let me develop a new (at least for me) form of wedding photography. Shooting with an approach influenced by Garry Winogrand's books, "Public Relations" and "Stock Photos", I used a Leica M-3 rangefinder camera loaded with black-and-white film, a wide-angle lens and a flash, often shooting with long shutter speeds, and focusing mostly on the dancing. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time this approach was used to photograph Orthodox Jewish weddings.

My goal was to capture the physical and spiritual energy and joy that felt was a major part of Orthodox weddings. Now, some 30 years later, as my friends' children are starting to get married, I've started to revisit this approach, adjusted for the digital era. I'm calling it "Wedding Street Photography." On Flashback Fridays, I continue to share some "oldies" from the 80s.