Alan Schaller has spent the best part of two decades training viewers to see cities differently: as arrangements of light, shadow and geometry rather than streets and buildings.
His first monograph, Metropolis, applied that eye to architecture. His second, Street Safari, turns it towards something warmer and more unpredictable: the animals that share our streets, harbors and skylines.
This says a lot about where Schaller's photography has been heading. Anyone who's followed his work on Leica cameras over the years will know the hallmarks: hard contrast, graphic framing, a willingness to wait for the decisive moment rather than force it.
Street Safari keeps these instincts intact but points them at subjects with their own agency and, frequently, their own sense of comic timing.
It's the inaugural release from Irys Publishing – the new imprint Schaller has launched alongside Irys, his photography-first app. It's a direct-to-reader model built around fairer economics for the photographer, a departure from the traditional publisher route that most photobooks still travel.
Shot on instinct
What's striking about what's inside is the range.
A hyena is captured at dusk in Berlin, mid-shake, water flung into a burst of highlights against the dark.
A fur seal turns up on a Cape Town harbor wall, backlit and glistening.
A Jaipur elephant, in contrast, is quieter and more tender; its trunk curled around its human handler's raised arm.
Add to that a crow lifting off against the glass flank of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, along with similarly enigmatic stops in London, Tel Aviv, New York and Berlin, and the pattern becomes clear.
Every image is built on the same principle: find the geometry first, then wait for the animal to complete it.
The biggest lesson
That patience is the real lesson here. Schaller isn't working with long lenses and hides; he's working the way he always has, on foot, in real time, letting backlighting and negative space do as much storytelling as the subject itself.
A goose breaking the surface of black water, a heron dropping its legs mid-flight, two swans on opposite banks of light and dark: these are compositions built on restraint, not proximity.
Schaller has called Street Safari a joy to shoot, and hopes it passes on his appreciation for the animals living alongside us.
That sentiment sits well with the book itself, which never tips into whimsy despite its subject matter. The humor is there, but it's earned through composition rather than cuteness.
For photographers, Street Safari is worth studying as much for its production as its content. It's a first-edition hardback, printed in Italy to the standard that Schaller's work demands, and available only directly from Irys Publishing rather than through general retail.
That's as deliberate a statement as anything inside its covers: a photographer taking control of how his work reaches his audience.
Street Safari by Alan Schaller is out now, priced $102 / £75 / AU$146, available exclusively via Irys Publishing
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