Atlanta, Immaculately Turned Out: On the Street with Cameron Adams
Atlanta is not lacking for people who are trying to make a statement with their clothes, whether they’re dressing up to impress or dressing out to express their personalities. And one man has made it his mission to document this—his name is Cameron Adams and he runs a photo blog called Atlanta Street Fashion.
We took a walk with Adams around the Fairlie-Poplar district downtown to spot some of our more well-dressed citizens.
Adams is a nicely-dressed fellow in spectacles, a corduroy blazer and sporting a camera around his neck. “What I’m really looking for are the outliers,” he says, “the mad ones, those who are dressing to stand apart from the crowd.”
When asked if he’s always been fascinated by fashion, he describes finding some slides of himself at nine or ten years old, “immaculately turned out with a camera around my neck. I’d like to think not much has changed.”
Clearly a lifelong-calling, Cameron’s website, Atlanta Street Fashion, is fairly simple. Head-to-toe shots of snappy-looking folks. But as composed and clean as those photos are, getting them, as we saw, can be a bit touch and go. There around Woodruff Park, Cameron approaches several people either in a hurry to get somewhere or with earbuds planted firmly in their ears who brush him off. But crossing Peachtree Street by the Flatiron Building, Cameron spots a young woman in a fuchsia scarf, a bow in her hair and a nice gray coat. Adams approaches her and she cheerfully tells us about her outfit before Cameron asks her to pose, framed in an archway facing the park. He snaps the shutter only two or three times and then she goes off on her way, and we go on ours.
“I never ask names,” he says. “It’s all part of keeping my distance.”
Adams has never worked in the fashion industry. “My background is newspapers,” he explains. “About 2007, when all the papers shrank, those of us who did not keep our jobs became bloggers. And I chose street fashion because I knew I wouldn’t get tired of it. And I’d always admired the work of Bill Cunningham (of the New York Times) and Scott Shuman (of the Sartorialist).”
And though Adams says that he’s out to capture clothes, more than personality—scrolling through the pages and pages of the Atlanta Street Fashion blog, you can’t help but get an idea of the many personalities at play in this city, and how they contribute to the character of the city overall. Whether you’re in Buckhead or biking the Beltline, people are going to want to see and be seen. Cameron Adams cites well-known fashion icon Yves-Saint Laurent: “Fashion fades… style is eternal.”
You can see the photos Cameron shot on his blog here.
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