Street Photography

jsrockit said:
I think the term Street Photography may have been come into fashion with the internet. I had never heard of it when I was in school for Photography in the 90s.
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... yes, I'm starting to wonder if that is the case, I'm unable to find anything in print among my collection that comes from the twentieth century ... it could be something quite modern that's simply being applied retrospectively
 
Ive seen an intervue with Winogrand, had to be late 70's, they ask him about street photography. He says in the book animals, was that zoo photography.? He calls the term street photography absurd...

Not 100% accurate, but it went something like that..
 
Sparrow said:
... I can't play that for some reason, do they use the term contemporaneously?
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I don't know this word.

They just talk about photography like regular people and using "street photography" term as we are using it now.

Common, famous photog filmed while he running and gunning with film Leica on the street, how else they supposed to call it, "candid right in to your face"?
 
Ko.Fe. said:
I don't know this word.

They just talk about photography like regular people and using "street photography" term as we are using it now.

Common, famous photog filmed while he running and gunning with film Leica on the street, how else they supposed to call it, "candid right in to your face"?
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... it just means 'that they happened at the same time' ... it's probably the 'in ones face' part of it that I feel is not applicable to me, and it wasn't used over here at that time I believe
 
Way too much energy expended here already on defining, justifying, rationalizing "street photography". You, the collective you, either get it or you don't. you either shoot it or you don't. Stop trying to figure it out. Its not going to make you a better photographer.
As the great sage Yoda once said, "do or not do, there is no try"

There ends my sermon;)
 
The OP just asked about the origin of the term, not definition or anything else.
I'm curious too. I know it was around in the seventies because I heard and used it. If nobody else remembers that, maybe I coined the term...If I did, is it too late now to apologize?
 
rogue_designer said:
I thought it came out of Atget's work and his self descriptions. But I do not have a source to back that.
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a little diddi I found
Wikipeida Snip
Eugene Atget is regarded as the father of the genre, not because he was the first of his kind, but as a result of his popularity as a Parisian photographer.<sup class="noprint Inline-Template Template-Fact" style="white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]</sup> As the city developed, Atget helped to promote the city streets as a worthy subject for photography. He worked in the city of Paris from the 1890s to the 1920s. His subject matter consisted mainly of architecture; stairs, gardens, and windows. He did photograph some workers but it is clear that people were not his main focus.
John Thomson, a Scotsman, photographed the street prior to Atget and had more of a social subject style than Atget. Though he does not receive the same amount of recognition, Thomson was vital in the transition from portrait and pictorial photography to capturing everyday life on the streets.<sup id="cite_ref-West_1-0" class="reference">[1]

[1] above, Apparently a book that mentions Atget as part of the beginnings of SP


This is an interesting topic, we may never know... kinda like tiring to define Street Photography in a catch all definition. Where there is no standard definition, just as we may not have just one spot in time where the phrase "STREET PHOTOGRAPHY" was "coined", it may a compilation of decades of growth and acceptance.
</sup>
 
Seems that it's never been, and I hope never will be, well defined. I started getting serious about photography in the late '70s and it was an established genre then. At least according to my photography teacher.
 
From "Bystander: A History of Street Photography" by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz -- referring to street photography in the early 20th century:

“To most people a street photographer is someone in times square or Piccadilly circus who will take your picture for a fee and send you the print later (or, since the adoption of the polaroid by such vendors, give it to you right on the spot)."

So one can infer that the term 'street photography' has been around at least as far back as the early 20th century. One can further surmise that the definition of street photography evolves over time.
 
Very curious about this topic. I hope the thread does not die.

Maybe it should be moved to the new Frank Jackson forum.

I don't have an extensive library of photobooks,but some members who do could probably quickly look at older (pre 1970) books on artists we now commonly call street photographers and see if that term was applied to them.

I cannot remember it being used when I was studying photography 30 years ago, but that might just be because I was not paying attention.
 
Having dug out my copy of "How to make Good Pictures"*, I see a section on p41 simply called "Street Photography", beginning "The successful picturing of street scenes requires both thought and dexterity on the part of the amateur". It's quite obvious that it's referring to something very much like what we call "street photography" these days and, judging by the Wright Flyer-type aircraft depicted, the fashions, and the cameras depicted, I think it's probably published in 1910 at the latest. So it's been about a looooooong time.

Adrian

*I wonder whether Chris Crawford has one of these? The phrase reminds me of his "I made this picture..."
 
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froyd said:
Very curious about this topic. I hope the thread does not die.

Maybe it should be moved to the new Frank Jackson forum.

I don't have an extensive library of photobooks,but some members who do could probably quickly look at older (pre 1970) books on artists we now commonly call street photographers and see if that term was applied to them.

I cannot remember it being used when I was studying photography 30 years ago, but that might just be because I was not paying attention.
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... I'm the same, I don't recall hearing it pre interweb and i've looked back as far as I could without success in my 'library' too
 
Looking in my copy of the Tidings Guide to the Leica and the Contax Way, both editions from 1954 there is no mention of street photography as a separate genre though they do discuss portraits, architecture, children, close ups, landscapes, flash, and sports. So it doesn't seem to be a term in common usage.

My 7th edition of the Graphic Graflex Photography printed in November 1944 does not mention it either though news photography is discussed.
 
My 1936 Edition of Kodak's How to Make Good Picture has a complete section on Street Photography and Architectural Studies starting on page 66. A lot of the pictures show typical street scenes with people, and many of the hints are directly related to taking pictures of people on the street without influencing or alerting them.

So far this is the earliest reference I have to the term.
 
Rodchenko said:
When I was younger, it was called candid or documentary photography in the UK.
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Same here in the States a few decades ago. When we were working we called it photojournalism; when we were doing personal work in public places we called it 'shooting candids'.
 
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