Marcel Pedragosa

Found Marcel Pedragosa on Lens Culture (http://www.lensculture.com/pedragosa.html?thisPic=1). I was first drawn to his work as he concentrated on Paris and trying to capture something fresh rather the usual sights. In practice this has meant taking shots which could have been of any metropolitan city (I think this was intentional). That said there is a real sense of the Parisian underground that he's captured.

An interesting aspect is how he took blurred shots in order to circumvent French law which states that you can't publish photographs of people without their permission. This gives the photographs a definitive quality and feel - it adds to the atmosphere, sense of movement, hustle and bustle.

At first I wasn't sure whether they were just pointlessly blurry and a bit lazy for that (i.e. just a cheap trick to make the shots seem more arty), however continued viewing made the images take on more interesting and enduring qualities.

In addition, the blurred quality actual puts focus on the main graphical elements of the pictures (because the detail is lost). This highlights the main design elements (diagonal etc) - see comments below

 The shots capture atmosphere and movement.

This man really stands out from the crowd which surrounds him. He's heavily blurred, but still has real character.

The graphical design elements of this shot really starts to come out. The B&W helps with this.

The diagonal line dominates by going all the way through the shot.

Strong vertical line in the below photograph - complimented by subtle diagonals.

There is an interesting set of curves in the below shot.