Is Street Photography Dead?

Is Street Photography Dead?

  • Yes

    Votes: 82 20.6%

  • No

    Votes: 317 79.4%
  • Total voters
    399
gns said:
Often (and thankfully), as soon as you say that everything's been done, something comes along to surprise you.
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The Winogrands, Erwitts were used as a spring board for people to develop their own personal aesthetic. There are plenty of contemporary street photographers out there now that produce great work (not just decent or good, but great)....

SP has become more than just a person walking down the street, lighting a cigarette or talking on a cell phone... Yes, these are street photos, but what makes them stand out? Is it the light, composition, repetition of different elements in the frame...?

The subject itself has been done before, but what differentiates the banal from good is the concoction of these other elements.
 
Not dead. Just overflowing with boringness and plain bad photos. Lots of snapshots of bored people walking around on sidewalks taken with wide angle lenses. Not many people seem to show much attention to composition, or waiting for the right moment or subject to come along. Just snap snap snap anything that walks along.

If it's something I can see any day in any city on my own - there's basically no point in me looking at somebody else's photo of it.

That's not to say that there aren't people doing great street photography, just that sturgeon's law seems to have become applied pretty thickly to the genre lately since a lot more people are trying to go at it now.
 
jky said:
I agree with you in that it's all been done.... that's why it's so difficult to make a decent street photo (and decent doesn't even equate good).
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Why bother with photography then? And it has not all been done. It's impossible in photography...times change and everything in the world changes with it.
 
tunalegs said:
Just snap snap snap anything that walks along.
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Most street photographers of today are more like, walk, walk, stand in a corner and look confused, yet pretend to be concentrating.

Snap Snap is the mark of a street photographer who at least has overcome the basic inhibition of snapping on the streets.

The problem with SP is too much talking, too much foruming, too much reflection, too much gear caressing and too much obsession with what others think of SP and why this and why that --- basically all the excuses in the world to compensate for lack of inspiration and courage to do SP. I mean, lets be frank here, SP is not for everyone.
 
jsrockit said:
Why bother with photography then? And it has not all been done. It's impossible in photography...times change and everything in the world changes with it.
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Yeh . . . that was the conflict that made me ask "Are we too critical?" in that other thread.
Maybe "street is dead" only really means that we the viewers don't give each image the chance it deserves, because we've seen 1000 others in the same category and have 100 more to look at in the next 10 minutes.

Maybe it's our sensitivities that are dead ?
 
jsrockit said:
Why bother with photography then? And it has not all been done. It's impossible in photography...times change and everything in the world changes with it.
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...as I had stated in response to another post:


"SP has become more than just a person walking down the street, lighting a cigarette or talking on a cell phone... Yes, these are street photos, but what makes them stand out? Is it the light, composition, repetition of different elements in the frame...?

The subject itself has been done before, but what differentiates the banal from good is the concoction of these other elements."

Yes, times change, but people will always be walking on some side street, sipping a latte, waiting for transportation.... these have all been done before. The *subject* has been done. How we arrange them and the elements we add in that 3:2 frame (or whatever format) is what keeps them alive. It's these types of photos I was speaking of...
 
A person walking on the street is not the issue, a person walking on the street and how that is interpreted by the photographer is SP... Lets at least get the basic grammar of SP before mourning its demise...


Anyone today who buys a camera and goes out to snap a few photos automatically thinks they're a street photographer. I mean common, if things were that easy...
 
The corollary of Sturgeon's law, if the number of people doing something increases, is that there will be an increase in the good stuff as well. Finding it is sometimes difficult!
 
Everybody is writing as well, I mean we're writing as we post to threads, is that mean we're a threat to novelists and professional writers?

Yes, everyone takes photos on the street, but how come there are not more than five really famous street photographers? Whats going on here? HCB, Robert Frank, Winogrand, Moriyama -- not even five!
 
upceci said:
Everybody is writing as well, I mean we're writing as we post to threads, is that mean we're a threat to novelists and professional writers?
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Exactly... by now surely everything has been written, why write anymore? 😉

Yes, everyone takes photos on the street, but how come there are not more than five really famous street photographers? Whats going on here? HCB, Robert Frank, Winogrand, Moriyama -- not even five!
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5 really? Either you're being cute or you need to brush up on your history.
 
jsrockit said:
5 really? Either you're being cute or you need to brush up on your history.
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Even I was surprised that I could only think of five great, and it is five, in order of merit:

1-Atget
2-HCB
3-Robert Frank
4-Daido Moriyama
5-Winogrand
 
upceci said:
Even I was surprised that I could only think of five great, and it is five, in order of merit:

1-Atget
2-HCB
3-Robert Frank
4-Daido Moriyama
5-Winogrand
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How about Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Martin Parr, Matt Stuart, Elliott Erwitt, Joel Meyerowitz, Tony Ray-Jones, etc?
 
jsrockit said:
How about Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Martin Parr, Matt Stuart, Elliott Erwitt, Joel Meyerowitz, Tony Ray-Jones, etc?
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And... Fred Herzog.

http://www.google.com/search?q=fred+herzog&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Ndg0Ua-nK8Hs0QHojICADA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1205&bih=919

Herzog_CrossingPowell.jpg
 
Not dead in the least. Thriving, I would say.

Unfortunately, it has become virtually impossible to see through all of the garbage work that is out there. Everyday life is more documented now than at any point in history. What this means, of course, is that there is an enormous volume of photography out there.

Most of what is out there is crap, and it is very difficult to wade through this crap to find the outstanding work that is still being produced by people like Trent Parke, Matt Stuart, and many others.

The challenge is to do things with one's street photography that elevate the work beyond the crap. I've been working in this genre for the better part of two years (an infancy, in relative terms), and I've produced maybe two images that I think are really good street photographs. The rest is just part of my learning process, for better or worse.

I find it enormously fulfilling to try to find things in public spaces that most people do not see, and that generally goes undocumented, despite the modern pervasiveness of cameras.
 
jsrockit said:
Why bother with photography then? And it has not all been done. It's impossible in photography...times change and everything in the world changes with it.
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For me, it's not that it's all been done before. Firstly, you're right, the world is always changing, so there is always something new. Secondly, I think it's OK to take photos over and over, I'll never tire of seeing some scenes.

However, I like landscapes, basically because I like nature. A good landscape to me is simple. The scene is already beautiful, so all you've got to do is accurately represent it.

Street photography, at least at first glance, is rarely beautiful. It's usually of a scene that we probably naturally find unpleasant. So then for us to want to look at it, there needs to be something else there, other than beauty. Maybe it's poignancy, or disgust, or humour, or something else. Then the problem comes that we've seen it a million times, and are bored of it.

I doubt I'd ever tire of beauty. I tire of 'look at this gritty scene' very quickly, as I see it every day.
 
Don't forget Vivian Maier

OK everyone heres the info on my show.

Calumet Photographic Chicago (Cherry St) in the gallery.

Fleeting Moments

Opening April 4th from 6:00-8:00.
 
thegman said:
I doubt I'd ever tire of beauty. I tire of 'look at this gritty scene' very quickly, as I see it every day.
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See, but that comes down to what you are interested in and what you consider beautiful. I'd rather look at gritty than pretty landscapes...though I like both. I tire of some things and never get tired of others. It's sort of like music... I'll never get tired of some generes regurgitating the same old same old, but in others it drives me nuts. I guess what we strive for is something, just anything, to make it feel somewhat fresh.
 
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