Who else doesn't get street photography?

[splitimageview]

Oh, believe me, elsewhere, it is, all the damn time.

Oh! I suppose the described phenomena doesn't have to be limited to one genre.

There is a large preponderance of published street photos that appear to be little more than accidental shutter button presses; one would think it would be less so with something like landscapes. Such photos are unlikely to be shared.

 

[maggieo]

There is a large preponderance of published street photos that appear to be little more than accidental shutter button presses; one would think it would be less so with something like landscapes. Such photos are unlikely to be shared.

Oh, they get shared. God, do they get shared.

One doofus who shoots Nebraska waterways in B&W with his view camera had a show in the gallery that handles my work and I've yet to see a more boring collection of photographs that have no sense of geometry or even the tonal range of B&W sheet film. And yet, people bought every single one of his photos and swooned over them.

 

[lukitas]

Don't think of myself as a street photographer, but I like to do all the wrong things :
people taken from the back :

incomprehensible juxtapositions of unknowns :

And random old geezers :

He said : "At 87, money is like warmed up dinner. It's OK, but it's only warmed up."
Maybe it helps to have a title .

Cheers!

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Ko;
Don't let this bother you. Some understand and some don't. It's this way with everything. It's always been this way. Experience is the only teacher, and often even experience fails to bring about knowledge.

Some learn to See, and some don't. You can't teach creativity.

Best Tovarishch Ko, pkr

Thank you, pkr 🙂

I think, imagination plays significant role in creativity. Imagination and experience (memory) allows to see far more in the picture which is often described as "here is nothing here". Street photography brings a lot to me, well, at least because I have experience (memories) in travel, cultures and ... drinks 🙂

Being at MOMA doesn't mean these are good pictures. Being made by a more or less famous photographer doesn't mean these are good pictures. They may have sociological or historical meaning, but good pictures they are not. Sorry.

I seldom see good photography that has homeless people as the subject.

I would not question what statement - "Museum of Modern Art is incapable
selecting good pictures, Modern Art Museum selects old documentary".
In the book "American Photographs, Walker Evans" they have simple message about pictures to be as the national treasure.
But I'm absolutely agree what many of street photography pictures from the past have most important meaning for me personally which is documenting. Do you think I was listening what they were talking about in this documentary? No. I was watching people on the street. Unbelievable, back then it was so many males walking with cigars on the streets. It is 1981 and in Moscow Cuban cigars are sold everywhere, but I never seen people with them walk and smoke. Decade and half later, we are waling with my cousin on the street and drinking beer. People are 😱, it took me few more years to figure it out what it probably was illegal in Italy or taboo. And we were wearing pajamas pants while walking and drinking beer. Back when we didn't know it was pajamas, we purchased them as fancy Italian outfit 😀

 

[Colin Corneau]

Days and days later, and all this effort that could have been put towards making pictures...

OP is, with respect, pointless. He doesn't like them...OK, fine. It's hard to believe though, that there's NO examples of the genre that aren't noteworthy, though -- hell, I purchased a book ("Never Not Seeing") from a poster (NY Dan) on this very forum that blows me away with its craft, artistry, wit and overall quality...so I really have to question how much effort this person is putting into their observation or whether they just want to bloviate. In which case I go back to my first statement: take that energy and go make pictures.

I love the genre, whatever you choose to call it. Nothing is more interesting than real life.
That's the thought that originally got me into photography as a kid and it's still the main driver to my life today.

Go make pictures.

 

[splitimageview]

Days and days later, and all this effort that could have been put towards making pictures...

OP is, with respect, pointless. He doesn't like them...OK, fine.

Not one place in this thread did I say that I don't like street, or even remotely imply it.

Sigh.

The point is there, if you look, and read, and comprehend.

 

[fireblade]

Oh, they get shared. God, do they get shared.
One doofus who shoots Nebraska waterways in B&W with his view camera had a show in the gallery that handles my work and I've yet to see a more boring collection of photographs that have no sense of geometry or even the tonal range of B&W sheet film. And yet, people bought every single one of his photos and swooned over them.

lol...they call it marketing.
Reminds me of the so called "famous" that hang a Leica around their neck...it's an ornament.
If Elvis was to take a pic of a rotting hamburger it would fetch millions 😀

 

[mlu19]

I'm patiently waiting for an answer to OP's original post, and OP's example of mediocre street photos from the 70's till now.

 

[giganova]

Bresson took me a long time to feel like I had an understanding of, and with my current level of understanding, I'm not especially a rabid fan.

His photos (to me) are about composition above all; repeated shapes, the relationship of items in space, and in some ways the spaces between elements in the shot.

I sometimes feel like the people in his shots are secondary to the compositions, that he would have made some of the shots whether they were people or inanimate objects.

I often don't really feel any direct connection to the subject of his photos, but that the shapes and spatial relationships are what he was more interested in.

It also ties in with the anecdote about him flipping Magnum nominees photos upside down to view the composition in isolation from the subject.

I'm sure someone could point me to photos of his that would clash with my understanding, but that's where I'm up to at the moment.

It's not what I want from Street photography at all, I'm far more interested in the subjects, and I can tolerate some loose composition in deference to the subject.

I find some of the HCB images deeply moving, regardless of the composition. Examples:

 

[airfrogusmc]

One thing that this area, Street Photography, does (I hate the term street photography though I am guilty of using it) is it does the one thing that photography does best and is at the core of photography being a separate art form. It can freeze a moment in time. And moments like the ones Bresson, Winogrand, Robert Frank and many other great photographers captured were doing things that are unique to photography.

There are so many photographs being made today. Probably more in the last several years than all two dimensional imagery in history up until the digital age.

I think we should all photograph what we see and feel. Try and do it honestly. Try and show the world how we see it. No matter what that is. There are always going to be people that are not going to like what you do. In fact I know some artists and photographers that get very nervous when to many people like their work. That might mean because everyone likes it, everyone gets it so they are playing safe and playing to the least common denominator.

My advice is if you don't understand it try to expand your visual vocabulary by looking deeper and there is never a better place to start than what has historically stood the test of time. Spend some time there and you might find yourself starting to get it. Maybe not. Lots of room to move around.

There is so much being created today that it is hard to weed through the clutter. But there is good work being created in all areas of visual imagery.

 

[fireblade]

I find some of the HCB images deeply moving, regardless of the composition.

You showed 3 images that all had to do with children...very good ones at that.
Do that today and they class you a pedophile, the police will be called, mum and dad will try to beat you down while the police are on their way...that's life in today's western world.

 

[rfaspen]

All so interesting. We seem to swirl around this topic frequently around here.

I'm awful glad there's diversity in photography. I "get" street photography, even though I'm at a loss to precisely define it; I know it when I see it.

More importantly, I know a strong photograph when I see one too. This is very important, because I also agree that a lot of photos I see while thumbing through the internet are not very good. Many are downright awful. Many of those awful photographs look just like mine! 😱 However, it is the "good" street photographs that make me like the genre so much. Just like I appreciate landscape, portrait, and cats.

I wonder if "street" photography has more opportunity than other genres to show me humor, humanity, culture, injustice, and the disturbingly odd.

Can we consider Elliot Erwitt a street photographer? (or as one member of RFF says: a street tog) 😉

 

[tunalegs]

Probably true. But no, I don't "get" Bresson, his photos don't tell me anything. Apart from the blabla around it they are not different from any other street shot.

What do you expect to get out of street photos in the first place?

I confess to also being late to this thread and also (alas) to be no photography student (clearly evident by my own photos) but if I recall correctly HCB (I'll use the short form) used to (on occasions) wait for his "decisive moment".

To quote Cartier-Bresson:

"Sometimes it happens that you stall, delay, wait for something to happen. Sometimes you have the feeling that here are all the makings of a picture – except for just one thing that seems to be missing. But what one thing? Perhaps someone suddenly walks into your range of view. You follow his progress through the viewfinder. You wait and wait, and then finally you press the button – and you depart with the feeling (though you don’t know why) that you’ve really got something. Later, to substantiate this, you can take a print of this picture, trace it on the geometric figures which come up under analysis, and you’ll observe that, if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless."

For some reason Henri's idea of the decisive moment has been perverted into the idea that one can just whip out a camera and surreptitiously take a shot at precisely the right moment with no thought whatsoever. Ironically, and somewhat amusingly it seems a lot of people who believe in this perversion of the concept hate Lomography's "don't think, just shoot" motto. 🙂

Bresson took me a long time to feel like I had an understanding of, and with my current level of understanding, I'm not especially a rabid fan.

His photos (to me) are about composition above all; repeated shapes, the relationship of items in space, and in some ways the spaces between elements in the shot.

I sometimes feel like the people in his shots are secondary to the compositions, that he would have made some of the shots whether they were people or inanimate objects.

I often don't really feel any direct connection to the subject of his photos, but that the shapes and spatial relationships are what he was more interested in.

It also ties in with the anecdote about him flipping Magnum nominees photos upside down to view the composition in isolation from the subject.

I'm sure someone could point me to photos of his that would clash with my understanding, but that's where I'm up to at the moment.

It's not what I want from Street photography at all, I'm far more interested in the subjects, and I can tolerate some loose composition in deference to the subject.

I'm not a particular fan of HCB's work, but his concept is simple enough to understand and appreciate. What is even the point of taking a photograph in the first place if you don't give a damn about how it looks? Cartier-Bresson sought to balance documentation and aesthetic choices. Just pointing a camera at a person or thing that is interesting doesn't really take much skill or thought, and results in crap photos often enough, regardless of how important or interesting the subject is. One may as well not look into the viewfinder if composition doesn't matter. Just point the camera roughly at the subject and fire away (granted, there are people who work this way and still have managed to get some good shots, but they're still working with an idea of what they want beyond "me point camera at thing, shoot picture!").

 

[Michael Markey]

Recently been to see this (twice)

http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/exhibition/strange-and-familiar/

Street photography at its finest .

 

[coogee]

The vast majority of so-called 'street' photography does nothing for me.

Most simply do not exhibit any degree of photographic merit, often they don't have a subject and look like a haphazard, random snap. Poorly framed, out of focus, people looking down at the ground, it's kinda like watching a sitcom that's just not funny. 🙂 Just want to change the channel...

Very rarely there are those photos that *do* hold interest, instantly grabbing the viewer's attention and having photographic merit, but the only thing that the latter have in common with the former is that they were, well, taken on some street somewhere.

It appears that most such photographs are posted/shared just *because* they are street, regardless (in spite?) of whether they have photographic merit.

Does anyone else feel similarly?

It all sounds like a bit of a straw man, this most/because/regardless.

FWIW I think most of us live in cities because it's the only way to make a crust but still take pictures regardless.

I'd swop 'street photography' for 'social media' in your original statement. Most of everything is crap, including this post. Did you like it? Quote it and refute it if you like, so what, so nothing.

The most popular anything is normally crap; movies, photos, music, whatever, it doesn't mean there aren't nuggets to be found. Most people never heard of Henri something or other but might know several Beyoncé selfies.

I don't think there's anything inherent in the Street genre of photography that makes it more or less anything, including inclined to be shared online expecting adulation. I'd say cat photography might be a more worthy subject of ire or iconic landmarks or candy

 

[kuuan]

A photo taken on the street may have a surprising element, e.g. an expression caught that makes it interesting, but that may come by chance and be taken by a photographer who may lack expertise. The surprise may give way to too high appraisal and give welcome encouragement but also seems to make some accomplished photographers overcritical.
To me it's the high contrast, high saturation, near HD looking high resolution landscape photos, the kind of image one gets turning on WIN10, that gets overdue appraisal. Concerning street photography, some that concentrate on graphics / light + shadow seem to get more recognition from accomplished photographers but often, due to lack of human aspects, don't cut it for me.

 

[Paul T.]

The vast majority of so-called 'street' photography does nothing for me.

Most simply do not exhibit any degree of photographic merit, often they don't have a subject and look like a haphazard, random snap. Poorly framed, out of focus, people looking down at the ground, it's kinda like watching a sitcom that's just not funny. 🙂 Just want to change the channel...

Very rarely there are those photos that *do* hold interest, instantly grabbing the viewer's attention and having photographic merit, but the only thing that the latter have in common with the former is that they were, well, taken on some street somewhere.

It appears that most such photographs are posted/shared just *because* they are street, regardless (in spite?) of whether they have photographic merit.

Does anyone else feel similarly?

You don't say.
95% of music out there is rubbish and will be forgotten within a year or two.
99% of art we see on sale in "fine art shops" is junk.

Is music a bad idea? Patently not. Likewise art.

The beauty is that, like Henry Ford's advertising, all of us have a different notion of which 1% or 5% is worth the price of admission.

Many if not most of us here, mysefl probably included, can be dismissed as poor HCB imitators, but there are plenty of people still out there doing great photography on the street, Niall McDairmid is one that immediately comes to mind.

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . A good composition should hold up when flipped.

Not really. There tend to be cultural expectations, based on reading, that are affected by left and right.

Cheers,

R.

 

[bobbyrab]

.esnesnon saw taht thguoht I

 

[Roger Hicks]

.esnesnon saw taht thguoht I

Sorry, can you translate that into Arabic? Or Hebrew?

Remember the famous story about the scoop at the Jewish Chronicle: HOLD THE BACK PAGE!

Cheers,

R.