Street Photography: Are set-ups and poses ever permissable?

[gns]

To bring the Winogrand branch of this thread back on topic a bit, I once heard him make a comment about staging photographs. Someone was questioning him about what was actually happening in one of his pictures. His response was that it didn't mattter. That you really didn't know if the man was walking forward or backward or standing perfectly still. The whole thing could have been set up for all the viewer knows. His point was that as a viewer, all you can deal with is the picture in front of you. How it was made and what the photographer intended can't be known and therefor don't matter.

Everyone has to have there own reasons for working the way they do. I don't think Winogrand set pictures up, but I don't think he would consider that a rule that anyone else should follow.

Cheers

 

[Koolzakukumba]

If shots are set up, isn't the logical conclusion that the person behind the camera is as much-more so?-a director as photographer? I sat down this afternoon and made a list of 28 potentially good photographs that I could take if I were prepared to have models appear under my direction. It wasn't difficult. From the viewer's point of view, some of them might appear to be pretty good but from a photography point of view, what are they? They're no more than vignettes of life rather than life itself.

Whether or not that matters to you depends on whether you believe that this type of photography should be the literal truth or a good facsimile of it. I haven't made up my mind yet but I'm inclining towards the former because, whilst it's easy to set up photographs, it's hellishly difficult to capture life, in an interesting but unmanipulated fashion, in the raw. That's where the real skill lies. The other bit, comparatively speaking, is a piece of cake.

Bruce

 

[Kin Lau]

Very interesting; this dicussion is closely related to the "ethical" discussion in wildlife photography. There the concensus seems to be that "not a twig be moved" without stating so in the caption and that digital manipulation is out of the question. That contrasts stongly with the general "the result counts" attitude here. Who, if anybody is right, I wonder ???

I'm a wildlife/bird shooter mostly, so I can understand the point of view. One can think of it as the difference btwn shooting in a zoo/farm/captive environment vs shooting in the wild. The later is much harder, and therefore that piece of knowledge elevates the "worthiness" of the image. Getting a full-frame flight shot is one of the hardest things to do. On my dslrxchange gallery, all my flight shots are at least a 1/4 crop, most are 1/8.

 

[canonetc]

Being deliberate is a worthwhile goal for me in photography, meaning, I knew exactly what I was doing, and was at the right place at the right time. I did not conform life to me, I conformed to life. Controlled abandonment.

I think Arbus posed most of her photos, but the photos were honest. Same with Avedon and HCB. In some ways photography is a search for truth. And that little voice in my head (among many, ha ha) always speaks if I am trying to get away with a lie.

Photography should be, above all things, honest.

chris
canonetc

 

[Roman]

Good point - e.g. Avedon's 'In the American West' - one of my favorite photo books, with some of the best portraits ever in photographic history - is a totally honest, realistic, direct body of work - yet it was all posed; strret photography it is not, though...

Roman

 

[TPPhotog]

This has turned into an interesting discussion on ethics, so I'll throw my thoughts into the frame 🙂

For me I love street shooting because I am basically interested in life and people. Capturing pictures as they happen gives me the thrill of the hunt, the pleasure of pinching a chip (French Fry?) off someone Else's plate, the knowledge that my negative contains an image of reality. So for me a not a piece of litter (thrash) is moved, a hair re-arranged or if I can help it the subject aware I got the shot unless I give them a print at a later time.

If I ask someone before I take the shot or get them to pose then it becomes documentary or a street portrait.

Hopefully my little ramble makes some sort of sense.

 

[T_om]

This has turned into an interesting discussion on ethics...

Which saddens me. 🙁

I do not see this as an ethical question at all. I guess I agree with Winogrand, the photo itself is a fact. As the image itself is all you can see, it is the only fact that matters. If you need a narrator to 'explain' the picture, to assure you it was unposed, to tell you the meaning, then it is too weak to be meaningful.

Tom

 

[Bertram2]

Photography should be, above all things, honest.
chris
canonetc

Chris,
If this means it shall not lie I second your opinion. And (only )at this point the discussion get's ethical. If you try to manipulat people for your own advantage that it is a bad thing
BUT "honest" it can be only so far as it shows the photog's subjective view of a cropped reality, in other words there is no objectivity in photography, it's always the shooter's sight. So "honest" can't ever mean "showing the truth". If you put 10 photogs around an item each of them will shoot his own truth, beeing honest anyway.
More philosophical than ethical ? 🙂))
Best,
Bertram

 

[Doug]

T_om, well said! 🙂 The photo is always abstracted from "reality", and contains its own reality.

 

[solane]

i believe in full frame.
i believe in cropping in the camera.
i believe in shooting what i see.

(this mantra is thanks to my college photography professors, bless them for their passion).

i do not, however, think less of photographers who have posed, cropped, edited or altered an image to get the result they wanted. i see through my viewfinder and that is the image that i want to capture. do i move the camera around or step closer or further away to get the composition i want? of course i do! like all photographers, i see something and i want to share it with others.

just like some painters apply paint with lots of small brush strokes and others smear gobs of paint onto a canvas with a palette. some paint from photographs, others from sketches or just from an idea in their head. these are all just techniques to create the finished product.

someone mentioned that arbus had posed some of her images. the image attached is an example of an image that may not have been posed but since the subject clearly knew she was taking his picture the result was clearly different than if the boy had not been aware of her presence. had there not been eye contact in this image, would its emotional impact have been the same? i don't think that weakens the value of the image if it were "posed".

ok, i'm getting off my soapbox. 😀

 

[Sean Reid]

Bruce,
I don't know if you can find much online, but 2 of his best books, "The Animals" and "Public Relations" have been recently reishued so they should be pretty easy to find.

I didn't realize that. Thanks very much for the tip. I just ordered extra copies of both books online. It's unusual to see books like this reprinted and I'd urge anyone interested in Winogrand to grab them (if you don't have them already). By the same token, several Paul Strand books (including the beautiful Tir a Mhurain) have been reprinted and are worth snapping up. Prior to reprints like this, one would often have needed to pay $200 - $700 (est.) for copies of books like these.

With respect the the question above about where to see Winogrand's work, I would skip the web and start with the books that he himself planned and sequenced, ie:

The Animals
Stock Photographs
Public Relations
Women are Beautiful

Of the books made of his work by others, the most convincing I've seen is called "The Man in the Crowd, The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand". There's also lots to look at in the big MOMA book of Winogrand pictures.

Cheers,

Sean

 

[back alley]

i have a hard time understanding why some are so anti cropping.

do we not already 'crop' when we put this artificial frame around a slice of reality?
what difference if we crop a bit more later?

do we not edit what we write or must we stick with our first thoughts?

joe

 

[Sean Reid]

If shots are set up, isn't the logical conclusion that the person behind the camera is as much-more so?-a director as photographer? I sat down this afternoon and made a list of 28 potentially good photographs that I could take if I were prepared to have models appear under my direction. It wasn't difficult. From the viewer's point of view, some of them might appear to be pretty good but from a photography point of view, what are they? They're no more than vignettes of life rather than life itself.

You might want to try making some of the ones you have in mind. You may find out that it isn't as easy as you're suggesting or maybe you'll find that you have a real knack for it. I don't do much directed photography but those who do it well have a great deal of skill, talent, practice, etc.. I think that it's no easier to make a strong directed still picture than it is to make a strong directed scene in a motion picture.

Whether or not that matters to you depends on whether you believe that this type of photography should be the literal truth or a good facsimile of it. I haven't made up my mind yet but I'm inclining towards the former because, whilst it's easy to set up photographs, it's hellishly difficult to capture life, in an interesting but unmanipulated fashion, in the raw. That's where the real skill lies. The other bit, comparatively speaking, is a piece of cake.

Bruce

I don't believe that any picture is remotely close to a literal truth. It's a picture, it's a made thing.

Cheers,

Sean

 

[Sean Reid]

Which saddens me. 🙁

I do not see this as an ethical question at all. I guess I agree with Winogrand, the photo itself is a fact. As the image itself is all you can see, it is the only fact that matters. If you need a narrator to 'explain' the picture, to assure you it was unposed, to tell you the meaning, then it is too weak to be meaningful.

Tom

I agree. I don't see any ethical issue being raised here at all. If one were to fake events in photojournalism and try to pass them off as having truly happened, that might raise ethical issues. If one were to fake a supposedly forensic picture, that might raise them as well. But, as I understand it, we're talking about pictures being made as visual art (good, bad or mediocre art as the case may be) and as such, I can't discern an ethical issue here at all.

For anyone who hasn't read it, James Agee's introduction to Helen Levitt's "A Way of Seeing" could lend an interesting perspective to this discussion.

Sean

 

[DaveSee]

Hmm... very interesting thread, and discussion!

Is it "street" as in public, or street as in movement? Can the public be staged, or is the public(space) a stage with its own rules, like street lights, exhibits and shops, puddles?

"Steet" to me is public--in contrast to landscape and architecture--where the subject is people. As has been said, the narrative of the folk in the image is important, whether they be "caught in the act," or merely "caught" in the frame. However caught, the photog worked with all the elements within the image(and later tweaked it in the print or developer?) and staged the people in the environment at the moment, in that space, on film. (( EDIT: or file system 😉 ))

Those who've made an image of a public event seem less contrived have often done a lot of planning prior to the snap... I'm not a photo journalist, but I'd suspect they develop a sensitivity to public places and tendencies of people which leads them to optimal positions to make their images... is this reaction to places and people not a form of staging or pre-arranging subjects?
Heck, it happened to me while making a photo at a friend's wedding: I found "the" spot, brought the camera up to shoot and just then a "professional photog" stepped right in front of me with his G2 and snapped off one shot and was gone(that shot ended up in a telecom's national ad campaign).

There's always a pose... I'm less inclined to believe the photog hasn't seen it first, and then made the picture, nor do I find public places more natural a setting than a studio to capture a good story.

rgds,
Dave

 

[Koolzakukumba]

Cropping as opposed to printing full frame is to me a bit like the difference between taking a shot as it occurs or directing one. The ideal, from my point of view, would be an unstaged, full frame print. However, I'm just back from my first real foray into "street photography" and I can tell you that I'll be doing some heavy cropping! That's because all of the 200+ shots were taken from the hip and need a bit of help compositionally speaking. Still, I'm pretty pleased at the number of shots that I'd rate as successful. I thought the miss ration would have been much higher. I'll post some under a different thread on this forum in a day or two.

Cheers,
Bruce

 

[Roman]

Well, I never got the 'no cropping' rule - with that you are simply throwing away too many opportuinities for good pictures. What if it is physically not possible to get the perfect composition you want & see, because
-there's a busy street/fence/window/group of people/Grand Canyon/whatever between you and your subject?
- you got the 35mm lens on the camera, and by the time you've changed those darn screw-mount lenses to a 50 or a 90, the scene would have been over?
- the composition is perfect for a square picture, but you did not bring the TLR, only the RF (or vice versa)?
- right when you pressed the shutter releas, that speeding bike/car/doggie/walker that draws away attention entered the fram?
- that bright sign that is so much more eye-catching is part of the frame in the only position where you could get your perfect composition for the frame?#
I mean, there are so many decisions and distortions of reality that you make by choosing a certain lens, position, exposure, focus point, DOF, etc. - why, then, is cropping the one singled out as not allowed? Why am I forced to use that 2:3 format ratio imposed on us by Oskar Barnack, even if I like a more squarish, liek 6:7, or a longer pano-format much better?

Roman

 

[John Robertson]

In the end, the picture is good or not regardless of how it was made or what the intentions of the maker were.

You should go about it in whatever way makes sense to you. Not according to some nonexistent rules.

I think Bruce I would have to agree mostly with this quote. Today with the spread of electronic imaging there will be even more doubt cast on whether photographs were staged in the future.

However if I see someone lurking about the Seagate or Dock Street in Dundee, I'll know who it is!!! 😀

 

[Doug]

To whatever degree we succeed at it, I think it's good to TRY to fill the frame as best we can to minimize later cropping, for reasons of technical quality. I recall a couple decades ago it was very popular to make a point of printing a thin bit of the clear film around the outside of the full frame (of whatever format was used), just to show how pure the vision had been. I usually fail to achieve this perfection, but at least I try. 🙂 I did like the framing effect, though, so I began penning a thin black line on my prints around the outside edges with a Rapidograph.

There can be "staging" in different degrees from simple to very elaborate sets and actors, and all can be artistic. Not that mine are all that artistic, but I don't mind trying to recreate what I saw a moment before...

For instance the other day while enroute on foot to check the mail, I saw a lady leaning against a wall licking an ice-cream cone with interesting light from behind. My tiny APS p&s cam was in its pouch, but the scene changed too quickly and I was also too far away. So I asked if I could take a quick shot of her licking her cone, in the way she had, and she agreed and I snapped. Is this a lie, an offense against "street photography"? I hope not... 🙂

 

[Koolzakukumba]

However if I see someone lurking about the Seagate or Dock Street in Dundee, I'll know who it is!!! 😀[/QUOTE]


What on earth can you mean, John? Seagate, Dock Street? You're not suggesting I'd be out at night photographing the working girls? Ha! No, I'm afraid it was pretty boring-the Errol car boot sale! It's a great place for characters, though. Every other person must weigh about 20 stones and it looks as if they've all dressed in the dark. In my t-shirt and linen trousers I felt slimmer and cooler than I have done for 20 years. It almost made me come off the Atkins diet...

Returning to the subject of cropping, I've been taking photographs for two decades and, with the exception of most of my Rollei shots, they've all been cropped. I'm not against cropping but I believe that, ideally, you should be able to fill the frame of whatever format you're using so that cropping isn't necessary. That's the goal-I don't think too many of us do that good a job of it. If you look at some of the uncropped shots of a few of the so-called experts, you can see lots of ways in which to improve the composition by cropping. However, there will always be a bunch of arty-farty types to explain why all the empty space is vital to picture...

Bruce