Anyway, What Street Photography Is ?

R

ruben

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We are having a recent and ongoing thread, where the OP asked if an SLR can be used for street photography.

Behind the question and very much on the answers, there are different concepts of what "street photography" is, or is not.

Instinctively I wrote and think that "street photography" is a very subjective (i, e, personal) issue, without strict borders.

Perhaps my anarquist concept flows from ignorancy. Would you, folks, like to throw-in your definition of Street Photography ?

Cheers,
Ruben
 
There will be a million different answers but I'll give mine:

Photography which occurs within and encompasses the urban environment and the juxtaposition of it's inhabitants, architecture and other elements. The way I practice it, it done with minimal imposition of the photographer upon the subject however other street photographers are more or less intrusive.

On a scale of people I consider successful street photographers I would say William Klein- maximally intrusive and Bresson- minimally intrusive. I prefer the Klein aesthetic but my practice is closer to Bresson.

Again in my subjective opinion pictures of people that are essentially portraits but happen to occur on the street aren't really street photography, nor are pictures of architecture that is devoid of other elements. The juxtaposition is key.

That being said, much like the famous community standard for pornography, I can't define it but I know it when I see it:

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As far as it relates to gear, this type of photography requires a wider lens to facilitate this interaction between the built and human environment and longer lenses that tend to isolate the subject in one way or another tend not to be successful.

In my practice fast shooting, loose but controlled framing and serendipity figure prominently. Again with relation to gear an RF is pretty perfect as it allows you to see the frame and ignore the focus and shoot quickly.
 
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Dear Ruben,

Is it worth trying to define it?

I'm not being awkward: I just wonder whether applying one label or another is worth the proverbial pitcher of warm spit (LBJ, as far as I recall).

Does it, after all, affect the kind of pictures anyone actually takes?

Cheers,

Roger
 
I think street photography, whatever it is, must clearly be done primarily to satisfy some internal urge. If you take the half million or so images Winogrand never printed and add the millions of others being produced by yourself and thousands of others, who is likely to ever see them?...or care. Shooting for yourself is not a bad thing, of course.
 
Dear Roger,

You ask me if is it worth trying to define street photography. By this very question you are indeed implying, like me in the thread about the SLR for street photography, that each one is entitled to his own definition. Not to speak about doing what she/he pleases.

However, I feel something is not right here. Street Photography does exists. A minimalistic definition leaving room for everyone's creativity should be given. Why ? I would say that at least a definition is worth for better identification of the path we walk, or for choosing alternative and challenging ways.

I think the genre has been influenced very much by HCB, but the de-monopoliztion brought by the internet is opening a different panorama with a lot of great street photographers we would not know otherwise. So this calls for some extension, away from the decisive moment and some other concepts.

And I will add the following. In contrast to the really Neerthentalyan concept that street photography died either by the seventies (as Wikipedia seems to imply) or with HCB, the internet is showing us that the genre is more alive and shining than ever, with many many extraordinary photographers, albeit "unrecognized".

I would like to point that at this post I have somehow victymized HCB (or myself), but it was just to symbolize that at some point many of us seem to live in a world where the great masters belonged to the far past, we all belong to a fringe past craft, while the internet has messed the cards upright.

This is what my eyes see. If anyone sees otherwise, kindly pour in your thoughts.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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I think if you take what you are doing seriously and you feel that it is worthy of your attention then you are intellectually bound to define it to yourself at least if not to others. The consideration and thought strengthens your vision and your art.
 
ruben said:
. . . at some point many of us seem to live in a world where the great masters belonged to the far past, we all belong to a fringe past craft, while the internet has messed the cards upright.
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Dear Ruben,

I see your point, but I am much tempted to say that success is the measure. If a photograph works, and you call it street photography or travel photography or reportage or candid portraiture (and it can be all or none), this does not ad to or detract from the fact that it works. Today. If it doesn't work, i.e. if no-one is interested, equally, what does it matter what you call it?

Cheers,

Roger
 
nightfly said:
I think if you take what you are doing seriously and you feel that it is worthy of your attention then you are intellectually bound to define it to yourself at least if not to others. The consideration and thought strengthens your vision and your art.
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Why? What binds you?

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, but if I can enjoy a glass of wine without all the somewhat strained wine-aficionado descriptions, why can't I enjoy photography the same way?

Cheers,

Roger
 
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I drink wine for enjoyment purely. Knowing a little about it enhances my enjoyment to a point, if only to know what I might like next time.

However for me photography goes beyond enjoyment. I'd like to get better at it, I'd like to take pictures that satisfy me on a deeper level and if at all possible to create something that I would consider art and to share these images with others.

As I've learned more about photography both by looking at others work and by becoming more critical of my own, it has had the result of improving my pictures, honing my vision and generally advancing my photography. By asking yourself what you are trying to accomplish and why I feel that it gets you closer to first conceiving a vision of what you want your photography to be and later to getting closer to that vision.

If you just want to shoot for the love of the act and to please yourself then perhaps these questions never need to be asked. If you want achieve something greater, however you define that, then I think these are worthwhile questions.
 
Pitxu said:
I wonder what you are doing that you need to qualify so many posts.

This is not an attack, I'm not saying you're wrong.
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Because, Richard, I am genuinely trying to discover someone else's views, not to attack them.

Many people on the internet have incredibly thin skins, and will take things as insults which are not meant that way. Then there are cultural differences, especially between the English and American languages. And sometimes, I do not express myself with the clarity I might wish. I know I am not alone in this.

In order to clarify such matters, some use 'smilies'; others prefer the English language. I fall into the latter camp.

Cheers,

Roger
 
nightfly said:
I drink wine for enjoyment purely. Knowing a little about it enhances my enjoyment to a point, if only to know what I might like next time.

However for me photography goes beyond enjoyment. I'd like to get better at it, I'd like to take pictures that satisfy me on a deeper level and if at all possible to create something that I would consider art and to share these images with others.

As I've learned more about photography both by looking at others work and by becoming more critical of my own, it has had the result of improving my pictures, honing my vision and generally advancing my photography. By asking yourself what you are trying to accomplish and why I feel that it gets you closer to first conceiving a vision of what you want your photography to be and later to getting closer to that vision.

If you just want to shoot for the love of the act and to please yourself then perhaps these questions never need to be asked. If you want achieve something greater, however you define that, then I think these are worthwhile questions.
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I see your point, and I completely concur: the wine example was perhaps not too clever. Even so, I am not sure that applying a particular label to your photography contributes to that point.

You take a picture. It works (or not). Why and how it works (or not) does not seem to me to be assisted by labelling it 'street photography' or 'reportage' or anything else. I mean, how does labelling a picture a 'landscape' affect the picture? Why not call it a 'townscape' or a 'skyscape' or a 'seascape' or even 'reportage'?

As I said to Richard, it strikes me that this is a subject worth discussing, and I look forward to your further views.

Cheers,

Roger
 
I welcome your thoughts as they helps me to clarify my own.

You are right to say that a label alone doesn't tell you if or how a picture works but I think you necessarily invoke some context or label when you are determining what works. Without saying it explicitly you are asking does it work as X?

Is it merely a way to remember something, like a visual note? I think this encompasses the vast majority of why the average person takes a photograph. They want to remember being in a given place at a given time. Anything that gets in the way of that may make it a "bad" photo in this context. Maybe they are too far away, maybe it's blurry (the two biggest features on consumer cameras now are zoom reach and shake reduction and a third is the various face detection modes).

A secondary goal of these sorts of pictures may be to assert social status, "I went here on vacation" with the unspoken "because this is what my social status affords me". So the success of these type of pictures is in conveying the time and place. The rendering of it isn't all that important. Without calling them "snapshots" or "vacation photos" explicitly this is the context that we are evaluating them under.

Similarly if I take a photo on the street of strangers I'm evoking some sort of context when I'm evaluating if it works. According to the vacation photo context, my street photos don't work. Most obviously, no one I know is in them. Secondarily, they aren't necessarily clear or flattering to the people who are in them. They do I hope convey a sense of place but the specificity of that place isn't entirely important. So what works in the context of "vacation photo" fails in the context of "street photo".

If I want to be able to determine or evaluate my photos I need a context. If I can't define this than I can't determine if the photo "works" as you say. I don't think there is a free floating way of determining how a photo works. You may not voice your criteria but it is there. The aesthetic standards you are applying to one type of photo are different than another.

You ask why not label it reportage? Well "reportage" is a term that people have defined. If I label my photo reportage, then it would be very valid for someone to ask me, what are you telling me that's newsworthy? Did something important happen that this photo is illustrating? Is it being used to illustrate a general social phenomena (poverty, homelessness etc)? These things might be present in a street photo but they are often not what the photo is about. So a lot of street photos would again fail in this context.

Many people, including most street photographers, don't like to label their photos as "street photography", I know Winogrand was very dismissive of the term. However that is how they are evaluated by others. I personally think it's incredibly helpful to know what you are trying to do even if there is a good deal of artfulness, randomness and serendipity involved in the act. I don't think things are robbed of their "magic" by being labeled although I think many people fear this.
 
Labels, like genres, can be simultaneously helpful and also vulnerable to refutation. It amuses me that one of the recognized masters of "street" -- Winogrand -- despised the term.

I think it's helpful to distinguish one genre from another, at least on general terms. But I also recognize that the boundaries between one genre and another are rather indistinct, and often overlap, sometimes purposely so.

Personally, I think of "street" as a subset of documentary photography, with photojournalism at the other extreme of the documentary category from street; these two extremes being composed of random and anonymous subjects on the one hand, and the purposeful and often famous on the other.

And I don't think that "street" actually has to occur just on the street; anywhere random and anonymous subjects are found to be interacting is fair game, usually in public.

But, as with most genres, there are no hard and fast rules; they're not categorized with scientific precision, and are usually recognized as a genre only after the fact.

~Joe
 
I would say your picture is, btgc, but the photo the woman in your picture is taking isn't.

They have different objectives and are evaluated differently.

This photo is actually a perfect illustration of my point above.
 
For me, street photography is: Photographs of people in spaces (public or not). The style "street photography" is more of an aesthetic opinion but ranges from in your face shots or to now what is very common as Minimalist street where you can vaguely make out the person but at more of a reversal role where the "space" is larger and the "people" are then the secondary subject. This is opposed to a Winogrand style where the person is the subject matter and the space is your backdrop.

I don't consider photos without people street photography and falls into a whole 'nother category (maybe urban photography?).

Also, street photography can be casted in so many other styles (or maybe a the opposite way)... such as street "portraits" where the relation between the subject and his/her backdrop does not exist (or does not matter).

It is indeed a style that grows and there's quite a few people out there who are very opinionated when it comes to defining street shots and how they are achieved (like using zoom lenses as oppose to sticking with wide shots).

Personally, I think the relationship between the people and the environment around them or other people is important and I always stick to using wide. If you don't have these elements of interest then it might just be another portrait on the street.

Reportage and documentary is what I would call the "roots" of street photography. That is maybe why the environment is an important fact... it helps define the subject in context of the space and helps in the documentary or reportage process of your photograph.... either to present, answer or define an issue.

The keys for me to a good street photograph is having (1) content and (2) composition or both. Sometimes even if you don't have good content but very good composition it works (when nothing much is happening and people just standing in a very interesting placement)... or the other way around. But having strength in one or the other is key to any good photo anyways... :)
 
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For me it's not a label--rather it is a genre, and, like Westerns or Film Noir, it's a bit artificial.

It involves a great deal of spontinaety ("images on the run" is Cartier-Bresson's original title) and is anti-natural, or anti-Nature.

In the most successful street photographs, the photographer has forgotten him/her self competely. Or at least I like to think so.
 
I would say the following rough sentence: Once upon a time the press was the only mass communicator. Then radio and cimematography appeared too. Still the visual hunger got its popularized answer by the magazines, who enabled to a great extent the material sustain of professional photographers, elevating their craft into a distinguishable art.

Here we are at the photo-essay that followed (or even started at - I don't know) WWII. The relationship between the photo-essay and street photography is not quite clear to me, but it seems that street photography was always there, even before the photo-essay, but it was the photo-essay that elevated it to great heights.

Then comes TV and afterwards color TV driving humaity crazy and stealing a lot of audience and resources from all other comunicators. The press and magazines became easy victyms and had to dramatically curtail expenses. Pro photogs where massively fired worldwide.
Photography also suffered from the competition of the new mass home device: video.

But now, and since quite a few and nice years, the internetization of the world has put the home computer at the center of a big fight against TV monopoly. And the internet, in its turn, has opened new horizons for photography in general, as well as for street photography.

Now, it seems to me that the rules by which we could say in the past, this person is a great photographer, this rules have changed. It seems to me too that the internet mating with photography is evolving too and we are to see a further blosoming of street photography.

But we live in a different world than that of HCB. All the pass great comunicators are still alive and co-existing one besides the other. Therefore, a great photographer is suddenly shown in a TV doco today, and tomorrow we forget his name. But the guy is still there doing his own.

The internet has opened new horizons, specially for us - the amateurs, those who cannot expect to make a good livehood from photography. We have an audience, a critical one, a selected one.

It is in this sense that I think that if we regard street photography as an art of the past, or see ourselves as fringe freaks, we are peeing out of hole. I have nothing against the founders of our art. On the contrary, they were the forerunners and nothing will take them this away, and better we become very much aware of their ways if we are not to repeat them at second rate quality.

But all this should not confuse us at least in one clear fact. We are seeing around a lot of great photographers, young, alive and kicking, and no formal recognition will byas my mind from what my eyes are actually seeing - great photographers, street photographers with great art under their wings.

It is with great pride that we can say these days, that besides looking at the past we can and must search for what is going on now.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
Actually it was John Nance Garner (another Texan) thirty-second Vice President of the United States (1933-41) who said that.


Roger Hicks said:
Dear Ruben,

Is it worth trying to define it?

I'm not being awkward: I just wonder whether applying one label or another is worth the proverbial pitcher of warm spit (LBJ, as far as I recall).

Does it, after all, affect the kind of pictures anyone actually takes?

Cheers,

Roger
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