Snap! Magnum street photographer Richard Kalvar returns to Hong Kong

How did you become a professional photographer?

I come from Brooklyn. Not only did I not have any training in photography, I had no interest in it. It was just luck and coincidence that I worked as an assistant to French fashion photographer Jerome Ducrot.  

He’s a very good friend of Andre Kertesz, a very well-known Hungarian photographer who does street photography. Though Jerome didn’t give me lessons [as a mentor], I learnt lots of things by just watching him work. He showed me some works that have nothing to do with fashion like those by Robert Frank. I made a little bit of money working for Jerome and decided to travel to Europe and  spend it. I took the Pentax camera Jerome gave me on the trip. I walked around, saw something and took pictures once in a while. The more I took pictures, the more interested I became. At the end of the trip after 10 months, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

You are known as a master of street photography – taking pictures of passers-by or any spontaneous happenings on the street. What drew you to street photography?

I like taking unposed pictures of people. I am interested in just looking at the world, the lights and try to put them in a rectangle. I also do portraits [for work]. I have to set up the pictures. But this interests me less than just finding something that maybe other people don’t see.