"Just snappin' some pics?": What street photography is for me

Wow ... dissing HCB! :eek:

Brave thing to do at RFF ... I'm not a huge fan of street photography but when I look at his work I can see what all the fuss was about. :)
 
Exdsc said:
A snap shot is the most carefully shot photograph, as Winogrand used to say, people when they take snaps quite often compose carefully, make sure everyone is smiling and in the frame.


When you say something like that about HCB, unfortunately it reflects more on your own knowledge and visual education.
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Exactly, I mean you can love or hate or everything thats in between his work but those things are clearly in his work but sometimes you have to look.
 
So you don't see the repeating shapes, leading lines, and geometry that dominates his work?

I can bring up some of his work and show you. Its what his work is all about and what most really good photographs are about. The man knew how to use visual language.
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When you say something like that about HCB, unfortunately it reflects more on your own knowledge and visual education.
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All it says is that I don't find his work interesting. Yes, there are returning visual aspects in it. Only to me they spell boredom. I do not see anything in it that catches my attention.

If you cannot appreciate some work without knowledge it failed in my opinion.
 
airfrogusmc said:
Well, HBC could be a bit pompous but his work did show his ability to consistently back up his words and his words are very true.
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Sure. But he liked to create a mystique (which his followers have magnified) whereas Ronis was far more down to earth. If you want to learn how a great photographer worked, with verbal explanations and clear analysis, Ronis can teach you far more.

Cheers,

R.
 
Spanik said:
. . . If you cannot appreciate some work without knowledge it failed in my opinion.
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Substantially true, I think. But I don't think you do need special knowledge to appreciate HCB. Either you get it or you don't.

There's also the truth that the 'greats' -- people like Ansel Adams and HCB -- tend to attract the 'young gunslinger' mentality: "No, they ain't so great." Overfamiliarity and overanalysis can also drag down their standing in the eyes of some.

Cheers,

R.
 
Spanik said:
All it says is that I don't find his work interesting. Yes, there are returning visual aspects in it. Only to me they spell boredom. I do not see anything in it that catches my attention.

If you cannot appreciate some work without knowledge it failed in my opinion.
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We can't all like the same thing and thats very cool.

But to say this "Nothing better than random pushing the shutter release" is just not at all what his work was about.

See if you can see all the repeating shapes in this image? Can you see the arrow formed by other visual elements? The perfect timing?
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/henri-cartier-bresson-gare.jpg

and the repeating shapes in this image, perfect placement of subject, and the perfect timing?
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2010/cartier_bresson/cartier_bresson_01.jpg

or the again repeating shapes, strong leading line from the railing to the subject, texture, implied motion and perfect timing.
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/henri_cartier_bresson_bicycle.jpg

There is a lot more going on in his work than random shutter pushing. Now whether you like or dislike the work is another conversation but he was not just pushing the shutter randomly. And these are the same visual elements that go into good street photography and thus good photographs period.
 
I have always found life more interesting in the skid rows where I have lived in Chicago and Los Angeles, the Tenderloin in San Francisco, Mission, the Fillmore district, the Desire projects in New Orleans.
Something about the mindset, consciousness, reality as opposed to where shoppers congregate or financial areas where the bankers hang out, places where I don't belong and am not invisible.
I think the key to invisibility is being around people like myself. I wander only in places I can see where I am going, having been there, I always feel welcome again.
 
Spanik said:
All it says is that I don't find his work interesting.
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The decisive moment tactic has become so common that photos of HCB don't look that fresh and interesting as it used to.

There is a flicker group called hardcore street photography, I'm not a member, but if you check their pool, the number of decisive moment shots are almost nauseating. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
 
Seeing is not tactic. It's what photography is all about. Much of the work I see today being shot today is just candids of people on the street. No thought at all of design, geometry. line, texture, shape, content and ultimately form. I don't see this work thats void of the visual elements I just mentioned in many places other than on line and in say sites like flicker. Flicker is not a barometer of quality.

Seeing these those visual elements, being able to use them and put them in your work is what all of this is about and these are the basic elements of what a good photograph, no matter what label you put on it, street, landscape, portrait, etc is all about.
 
Exdsc said:
The decisive moment tactic has become so common that photos of HCB don't look that fresh and interesting as it used to.

There is a flicker group called hardcore street photography, I'm not a member, but if you check their pool, the number of decisive moment shots are almost nauseating. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
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hardcore street photography is just another of those self-congratulatory flickr groups that folk use to drive up their comment-count ... it has little to do with Henri's aesthetic
 
Rafael said:
Through photography we can do something that is impossible for a painter or a sketcher: we can capture a moment in time that, while unique, can evoke or communicate human emotions that are universal. Certainly a realist artist can achieve a similar result. But he or she always has the option to exclude or include aspects of the scene that he or she is reproducing. And, no matter how good he or she is, the realist artist is always drawing or painting the scene over time. So, discounting photo manipulation for the time being, we can say that only the photographer communicates by composing images exclusively from the subject matter of his or her environment as it is at any given moment.
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I interpret your definition as a strive for an objective, universal - scientific if you wish - visual expression. I agree that the photographic medium is the one that lends itself best for this approach, but I don't believe you can edit your own self out of the process. No conscious reproduction of "reality" can be objective since perception is subjective.

So, I'm curious - why is the time aspect important to you? And why is it important not to edit the scene?

You are only half way to a fulfilling justification for your choice of craft.
 
When you say something like that about HCB, unfortunately it reflects more on your own knowledge and visual education.
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It is unfortunate that some people believe that those who do not share their enthusiasms are in some way deficient.
 
Spanik said:
All it says is that I don't find his work interesting. Yes, there are returning visual aspects in it. Only to me they spell boredom. I do not see anything in it that catches my attention.

If you cannot appreciate some work without knowledge it failed in my opinion.
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Having studied photography, and photographers, I found 'HCB' to be the least interesting work, but...

We need to understand that *at the time* HCBs work was more unusual. Now, every man with a roll in Tri-X is a street photographer and, in my opinion, has made the genre trite and dull. I'm not saying HCBs work is crap, I'm saying there is SO much derivative work, it's devalued the original stuff, the outstanding stuff will stand the test of time, but I honestly think HCB had maybe a handful of truly outstanding photos, at best.

If 'street photography' simply hadn't taken off, HCBs work would be innovative, and continue to be interesting.

Ansel Adams is in a similar position, I love his stuff, but you can go on 500px and find 100 equally outstanding landscapes, actually Margus on this forum has equally or more stunning nature images.

HCB seems to be beyond criticism to some people, which is ridiculous, but then, I feel similarly about The Beatles, they may have been interesting at the time, but they wouldn't get a record contract now.
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
It is unfortunate that some people believe that those who do not share their enthusiasms are in some way deficient.
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I agree with you.

As for Henri Cartier-Bresson's photography, I suspect it may be the dominance of visual construction and near impossible feats that is sometimes a bit overwhelming. His pictures often come through as a bit 'cold' to me.

But to say his pictures aren't good isn't very clever. Just as it would be to say that they are, without giving arguments. There is no such thing as good or bad art - different images serve different purposes.
 
Willy Ronis and Werner Bischof are imo better photographers and much more human meaning more down to earth than HCB who is a great photographer in his own right but I always felt that something was missing in HCB work, which is quiet visible in Ronis' work and I believe it's humanity. Still love HCB but prefer the other two.

Street photography for me is part of documentary photography. Street photography can be dull but doesn't have to be. Willy Ronis is for me the eye whereas HCB is more the calculator. Both produce stunning work but I believe with a very different mindset.
 
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