Help me understand street photography

I love this place, this may be one of the 'best-est' threads ever!

btw.. fred, sounds like you're onto some kinda Phase II Thomas Demand thing
 
Heres how I think of it (expressed another way.)

Go out and buy a few dozen back copies of National Geographic - ones with articles about cities or countries. Study the photos that got published (remembering that about 99.9% of them did not.) Now try to emulate them.

NG has "a look." More often than not it does not take big expansive shots of places. And even when it does there are almost always people in the shots. Doing things. Things that are representative of their lives and their society.

Thats not a bad model for street photography. Its telling stories with pictures. Maybe the stories are in the viewers mind and have nothing to do with what the subjects were really doing. But thats OK too. The thing about poetry is that the reader will often read into the poem something the writer never intended. Like I said, I think good street photography is like poetry.

(Just wish I could do it properly myself.)
 
Pherdinand said:
But i would add this: If you wish to share it to hear another's perspective, so be it, however, be prepared that some people might have different view, might not like what you show or might not see what yo seem to clearly see in your own work.
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I agree, if you post something for public view/commentary, be prepared.

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M. Valdemar said:
What a bunch of babies.
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Would you mind being more specific? Perhaps suggesting what we might do instead of flogging a dead horse? Make more boring macro photographs? Pay attractive young women to stand around looking bored in the studio?
 
Pitxu said:
I agree, though you did savagely attack my "silly" photo which I posted merely to show an empty street. By it self it isn't a good photo, in fact it's badly exposed and badly scanned etc. If i thought it was a good photo it would have been in my gallery long ago.
But you took it out of context as I did your piece of a larger documentary series.

Your'e right, I did act out of anger and frustration, I would never dream of leaving a negative comment on a photo I did not like, I would just turn the page leaving no comment at all. I apologise and will now go and delete my angry comment, but you started it with post #76...:p
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Pitxu...a few points:
You posted the empty street photo asking "is it not street photography". You took it out of context by not showing the other one, and then by explaining it with a text that has nothing to do with the original question of the thread.
I did not call it "silly".
I did not attack it - i just answered your question that is, i said no it is not a street photo in my view. I also wrote there the argument, why i think it is not.
I did not attack your photo, or you in any way. In fact i began my answer to your question about that shot with "don't take it as an offense". Furthermore, i honestly complimented you on the other shot you posted, with the schoolboy.
I even swallowed your comment saying that i don't know how to look, as well as your remark on the worthless stuff in my gallery. It's not the end of the world. You are just another guy on the Internet, just like me, and i don't mind people criticizing what i upload to a public gallery. That's why i do it, you know.

If you took this as any kind of attack, then ..well, one can always find a reason to pick a fight, i know.
 
Firmly advocating freedom of expression, all I have to say is:
"If you have to ask, you'll never understand." :D

If you are drawn to the genre, then make images of it. If you aren't then leave it to those who are. Sheesh.

As a part-time PJ, I'm drawn to the "street" moments when it fits the story I'm building. I'm rarely trying to achieve Winogrand passivity, but there have been a few decisisive moments.

Make images, not war.
 
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Originally Posted by peterm1
NG has "a look."

Yeah, the look of imperialism.

Actually I would think I would say it has the SMELL of imperialism.
 
What a cracking thread this is.

Sadly I'm too knackered to continue reading right now. Keep it up folks, it's great entertainment. I look forward to continuing the saga tomorrow.

G'nite.
 
Pitxu said:
I do find it all too difficult to have a "conversation" like this via internet where important subtleties are difficult to express correctly (for me anyway).
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I agree with that. And not only verbal problems; especially the non-verbal part is getting difficult. Joking, being cynical, or (self)ironic is also usually unnoticed and that can change the meaning of a sentence to its opposite.
I also did not understand mhv's comment/approach to call the genre dead, and i expressed my disagreement.

So that's it..., goodnight. The thing is overdiscussed from my part.
 
Pherdinand said:
Well, don't take it as an offense, but in my view, it is not.
There's nothing happening on that image.I see nothing, i think nothing, i feel nothing.
Why did you take it?and why did you put it up here? what was the intention?
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A photograph is not a photograph if you don't see what you want to see?

That is a posture I saw on PNut as a matter of daily course. Other than, of course, the annoying counter-effect was to see lots of over-Photoshopped nudes or nudes holding a knife, or nudes holding nothing...or photographs taken on the street with an outrageous amount of contrast which became an abstract self-flagellating counterreaction to "good" photography.

Kind of the equivalent of Schoenberg taken by Berg to mock Mozart in thinly-veiled attempts to compensate for his lack of talent.

...anyway...

A photograph is a photograph if it was taken with a photographic device.

An image is something else; on a photograph; from a photograph; or not from a photograph.

And: something is as boring as you (not you you, but a general "us"...English hasn't evolved to handle rhetorical pronouns properly) want them to be. Today's boring Saran-Wrap is the next century's gold museum piece.
 
Pitxu said:
I'm allways open to constructive critisism, but being savagely attacked is not what I would expect from civilized gents.:eek:
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it still be the Wild West, in this maity fainh "new frontier" ::spit in mah bowl:: In da maity Wild West you be redefinin' things for de leest amount of effor', ah reckon.

Or so some people think. Pardner ;)
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
A photograph is not a photograph if you don't see what you want to see?
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:))) ok this is getting hilarious.
Gabriel
I wrote that IN Y VIEW the photo of the empty street he posted is NOT a STREET photograph. Not in the sense of the "street photography" what we are discussing here.
I expressed WHY i THINK so, and for more details please go back to my post answering the original question of the thread.
And the whole issue around that photograph is closed now so you can calm down :)

I see the first working week of 2008 was very tiring.
Have a nice weekend, everybody.
 
I had a long winded reply of why I like 'street photography' (in it's many different flavours) and why it has a role in my life and the documentation of the global society.

Many such as Ruben, have come close to expressing what I feel and in words better than I probably could have.

Photographs record what we see. Sometimes that image is shocking, beautiful, funny or a thousand other descriptions but ultimately the context in which they are viewed will be totally within the 'eyes of the beholder'. A quaint rural scene for one person is a scene of proverty for another. A picture postcard shot of the Swiss Alps is a mundane backyard shot for a Swiss villager.

I personally want to see what I can't see for myself. I want to see 'mundane' city / street / urban / rural shots of places that make this global village. I want to see the things that make people smile and cry and take joy in the fact that those feelings are universal. Everytime I see a new image, I become wiser in some way.

If there is any doubt that the beauty of 'street' photography can be found in the average person like you or I, just look at the M.I.L.K competition / project. 17,000 people put forward over 40,000 images that portray 'geographically diverse photographs of family life, friendship and love'.

The book that came from the selected photographs is called ' Humanity - a celebration of life' and in my opinion contains the very best of what I enjoy in photos. (ISBN 0733618731)

I highly recommend it to anyone that may have a question regarding 'street photography'.

Now for a photo to lighten things up a litte. My daughter and wife laugh and chat as they 'experience' the world through someone elses eyes... (and taken with a rangefinder and HP5).

p1049514848.jpg


Cheers,

John
 
"telling stories with pictures"

lol, another thing winogrand would take issue with, along with lots of other photographers. natgeo's not the place to look for street photography.
 
Pherdinand said:
But the fact is, street photography is not about bums, hot girls, street musicians, and not about streets. In my current understanding, street photography is about things happening with people on the street, lasting only for seconds, or fractions of seconds, that can be funny, moving, thought-provoking, thus interesting on a higher level than "just a hot chick from behind". The beauty of the gender is, you have to be at the right place in the right time, you have to NOTICE the things, and you have to be awake enough to quickly compose and snap a photo of it.
If all clicks together you can get images like the ones here:
http://www2.in-public.com/
My favourites there are Nick Turpin's and Nils Jorgensens' galleries, but the others are also quite interesting.

What is it good for?
Well, you certainly won't get rich of it. Maybe good for fame, if you manage to get good ones and enough people clap on the Net. Maybe good for ego if you manage to get some that please you so you can say Yes, i snapped it, yes, this is how it happened.
And when you reach a really high level you can display them in public :) and change the world a bit.

But the first "gain" of doing it is, you will start seeing more from our world, and enjoy the simple days more, just by looking around and noticing the interesting people, the funny coincidences, the unbelievable scenes that, one after the other, develop and disappear in front of all of us. What on earth can beat that?
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Very well put.

What I like about (good) street photography is that one is usually presented with a new kind of intellectual puzzle about the human condition, perhaps also a suggestion towards a kind of solution, a kind of play of ideas with the photographer and an amplification of your experience about the world around you, ideally in a way that does not merely repeat what one already knows about it.

It certainly seems to me that 'Street photography' need not be made on the street at all. That it has, and still is, is a mere statistical happenstance, dictated primarily by expedience, possibly technical considerations and, admittedly, convention. But there's nothing I can see to disqualify as 'street' a photo that explores in an interesting way the human condition, whether it be in an office, on the moon, or even in the absence of any human within the frame. About the conventional label 'street photography' - I have no gripes with it even if it is just a misnomer. And I 'd be unconcerned if it were called 'Not-street-photography-strictly-speaking-because-that-would-be-a-misnomer-and-we-don't-like-that' or 'Something-something-photography-I-forget-what-right-now'.

But I 'd still try to do it in the best way I could.
 
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aizan said:
"telling stories with pictures"

lol, another thing winogrand would take issue with, along with lots of other photographers. natgeo's not the place to look for street photography.
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That's a little harsh (politics of the times aside).

What about TIME magazine? Did it rate?

Cheers,

John
 
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