jky said:
{...} it seems that street photography is pretty subjective & each person has his or her own take on the whole genre {...} but there are some photos that just speak to me whether it be sadness, sorrow, joy... but now aren't we tip-
toeing onto documentary photog?
It seems to me that what, perhaps, can be called "street photography" overlaps with reportage, documentary, portrait, travel and probably other genres of photography. Given its somewhat nebulous boundaries, and the subjective nature of the decision about "what's in and what's out" (let alone "who gets to decide"), I've pretty much determined that I'll categorise almost none of my photos as being "street". At
deviantArt, for example, I'm much more likely to categorise a shot as "spontaneous portrait" or "city life". That's partly defensive...
The trouble with calling something "street photography" is that there will always be someone around (not so much here on RFF, mind you, but around) to say "no it isn't!", usually with the implication that they're a real, cool, with-it, street photographer - whereas other peoples' rubbish is just that. For example,
Chris Weeks over at
dA, despite other more admirable qualities, seems to positively encourage that approach. For me, that fits under "life is too short to argue with such people". As to whether my photos are any good, well, I'd like to think some are even if many aren't - but I'm hardly the best judge of that.
Still, It might occur to me to think that something like:
looks like a street photo. But someone is likely to point out that this was taken with a nasty, nasty, digital SLR then converted to monochrome (let's leave out technicalities about whether photography, digital or film,
really captures anything
but monochrome).
Taking these objections into account, I might propose that this, taken with a Leica M3 on black and white film, might look like a street photo:
but someone is bound to object that I used C-41 process film, rather than
real black and white.
So, I might propose this, shot on Ilford Delta 400 (and pushed a stop):
but this might fail on two fronts: its indoors (so not "street", even if a public bar is about as public a place as you can get) and I know the guy taking the shot (would it be "street" if I didn't know him?)..
So I might propose this one, on Delta 400, on a footpath, plus I've never seen the people before or since:
Yeah, but that was shot with a Hexar RF, which has motorised film handling and was taken in AE mode. Not very purist, wot?
You can see where this is going. Even if I managed to get over all these objections, someone would note that the moment I captured wasn't "decisive" (in the HCB sense) or not decisive enough. Or something..
This carping seems to become very prevalent when something of value is on offer.
This post in another forum, and the rest of the thread, regarding the recent
dA street photography contest shows the kind of thing that can happen when people (
not the organisers) start trying to "define people out of the running". (Full disclosure: I entered, didn't win, didn't deserve to, and nobody tried to exclude my entry.)
For all these reasons, I find it usually suits me to avoid the claim that anything I do is street photography.
...Mike
