What exactly is street photography?

[Bertram2]

What exactly is street photography?
I

Who really knows ? 😉 A diffuse, worn out , misunderstood, and badly abused word
Best you take a book of Doisneau or Ronis and you will be enlightened immediately. Just translate that style to your life, your concerns and your steets and you are going the right direction.
Ah, i forgot, to your vision too you must translate them. Their vision was a "Photographie Humaine" and I think it's got perfectly visible in their work.
bertram

 

[RML]

That wikipedia article is pretty good!

The reason I'm putting this question is because we all seem to have a different definition of the term street photography. None is wrong or right, I guess, but it would be nice to understand what others consider street photography. We all may learn from others' views and opinions.

I for one don't consider myself a street shooter. I don't shoot many people, and certainly not deliberately. I prefer city scapes, the dichotomy between nature and urban, the places where nature and manmade scapes meet and mingle, but also fragments of urban life. My personal idea of street photography does not match with what (I think) I shoot.

 

[doxx]

I like the music metaphor a lot, here something I came up with some time ago:

I think street photography is very similar to jazz music - a free form of art which represents your
lifestyle... you breathe it, you live it - you do it. At some point you know somebody listens to your
music, or somebody looks at your pictures and gets an impression of your little world; how you
see things and how you feel about them. These moments are meant to be shared. They might be
little moments for me - but they can be great impressions for you...

 

[JimG]

For me it's outdoor urban photography about the relationship between a city and it's inhabitants.

 

[JohnL]

The Doisneau kiss phot was posed, using models, said to be based on a scene he had actually witnessed. There was a big trial over it, with some people claiming they were the ones depicted. I'd guess that many - if not all - those other assignment photos for Life also used models. This image litigation business is not so new.
Posed or not, my conception of street photography would then be "urban candids or apparent candids". I find it very difficult, myself. In fact, I can only think of one half-way-decent shot I ever made that would fit this definition.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I think this need to often find the meaning of "street photography" is as like often trying to find the meaning of "taking a shot". Of tequila? Of a cannon ball?

It's short-hand for all of the above in the context it is used. The controversy should be over the controversy itself, imho.

That's just moi 😀

 

[RJBender]

What exactly is street photography?

I think the term "street photography" means quite little, especially if it includes the crooked, unfocused, unaimed, unwilled "candid" snapshots that are usually presented as street photography.

Besides, for "real" street photography you don't need an rf camera per sé. It can and is done with big black (d)SLRs.

I think it would be quite constructive if someone could come up with a proper explanation of the term street photography. Now sometimes small arguments break out whether such-and-such is or isn't street photography with everyone having different ideas about what street photography is. Would Salgado be a street photog? He himself doesn't call himself that. Brassai? Lange? Who else, and who not?

Or did we have this thread before? If so, what was the conclusion?

Good question, Remy. I hear the term street photography used here often. I'd like a good definition, too.

R.J.

 

[Poptart]

1. Find hookers or homeless dudes or some other "edgy" persons.
2. Pose them in the lights of a liquor store.
3. Develop in diafine. Presto!

 

[RJBender]

1. Find hookers or homeless dudes or some other "edgy" persons.
2. Pose them in the lights of a liquor store.
3. Develop in diafine. Presto!

Pop, what if these "edgy" people want to steal your gear so they can buy some drugs? Should you take some drugs with you just in case someone needs a fix?

R.J.

 

[Honu-Hugger]

This is street photography in Idaho...(potatoes littering the highway)

 

[Poptart]

Pop, what if these "edgy" people want to steal your gear so they can buy some drugs? Should you take some drugs with you just in case someone needs a fix?

R.J.

Marlboros solve everything.

 

[peterc]

Should you take some drugs with you just in case someone needs a fix?

You mean you don't carry a bag of crack, some tin foil, a straw and a lighter with you at all times? 😱

Peter

 

[RJBender]

You mean you don't carry a bag of crack, some tin foil, a straw and a lighter with you at all times? 😱

Peter

Maybe a few pieces of rock salt, tin foil, straw and lighter.

R.J.

 

[peterc]

Maybe a few pieces of rock salt

A discerning crackhead could probably tell the difference, but fortunately there aren't many of those. 😀

Peter

 

[RJBender]

A discerning crackhead could probably tell the difference, but fortunately there aren't many of those. 😀

Peter

You throw it down in one direction and take off running in the opposite direction. By the time they fire it up, you're in your car driving off.

R.J.

 

[Bertram2]

Sorry, could not resist !! 😀 😀

From an interview, Barbara Diamonstein asks Gary Winogrand:

D: I hope that what I'm going to bring up won't be tiresome for you, too The term "street photography" and your name have been synonymous for quite some time. But the streets are not the only place where you've worked over the last twenty-five years or so. You've worked in zoos and aquaria, Metropolitan Museum of Art openings, Texas rodeos. There must be some common thread that runs through all of your work. How would you describe it?

W: Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid.


ROFL, 😀 😀 😀

Seen from an artistical standpoint these categories are plain intellectual diarrhoea of critics, which are not more than the stock analysts of the art market.
He knew it and he really said it, publicly !! 😀 Honest man, and a tough one too.
Poor Barbara had a really exhausting time with him ! 😀

bertram

 

[Stephanie Brim]

Like most people, I think that street photography is an artistic classification that really doesn't have a meaning other than a way to categorize a certain type of photography. Most of what I do is 'street' photography. There are too many definitions.

 

[Bertram2]

Like most people, I think that street photography is an artistic classification that really doesn't have a meaning other than a way to categorize a certain type of photography..

Well , I think this is exactly what Winogrand's answer was referring to. This category does not exist for him.

Bertram

 

[Finder]

"Street photography" is a classification used by historians and critics. It really has no meaning and is very subjective. The term is also proceeded by artists who are now put in that classification. As Kant clearly demonstrated back in the 19th, catagories of thought are relative and not absolute.

 

[StuartR]

I have not read the whole thread, but I basically define it as photography taken outside a studio, but not being specifically "landscape". But whatever...it is what it is. Categorization is just something that humans do to make the world comprehensible.