The photographer and filmmaker  Cheryl Dunn has been making pictures in the streets of New York for the past twenty years. She’s drawn to street shooting because “it is pure and uncontrollable and it takes an intense commitment,” she writes in an e-mail. “I feel it reveals a thread in humanity that is random and true and hard to capture.” Twelve decades ago, when Alfred Stieglitz first took to the streets with a handheld 4 x 5 camera, he was driven by the same thrilling mix of difficulty and serendipity. “My picture “Fifth Avenue Winter’ is the result of a three hours’ stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd, 1893, awaiting the proper moment,” Stieglitz wrote in 1897. “My patience was duly rewarded. Of course, the result contained an element of chance, as I might have stood there for hours without succeeding in getting the desired pictures.”

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Documentary originally broadcast in 1996 about the life and work of Gil Scott-Heron who died the 27th of may.