Street Photography

Bill Pierce

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What is “street photography?” For me, it’s the candid photography of people in public places, but it obviously means a lot of different things to different photographers. I see pictures with no or a few distant people, pictures I would call cityscapes, called street photography. That seems fair. After all these are pictures of streets. I see posed outdoor portraits called street photography; I would call them outdoor portraits. When I walk the streets of New York, I see a lot of people taking selfies with their cellphones. I wouldn’t, but some people call that street photography.

Nick Turpin, one of the best British street photographers, is also one of the most modern, now working in color and sometimes with the moving image. He does what I call street photography. But so many people are out on the street doing so many different things with their cameras that he says he does, “candid public photography.” (I’m married to a Brit, a writer; they are terribly specific in their choice of words.) I’ve noted Nick Turpin’s website below. I think you’ll enjoy it. But I would like to hear what you think “street photography” refers to.

http://nickturpin.com/
 
Maybe "street photography" is--pointing your 28mm lens at tall buildings in NYC and people getting in the way--- :)
Paul
 
I wouldn't call cityscapes "street photography" just because there is a street in the picture, and agree with you about outdoor portraits, or environmental portraits not been street photography. However, some street photography can look posed even when it isn't. The first picture below, for example. As I was walking along a main street, I passed by this young man at noon in a small side street, sitting along a wall, on a 150cc motorbike smoking and looking pensive and troubled. I turned around, walked back to the small lane and took his picture — a "hip shot" — just as he had dropped his cigarette and was starting to move to leave on his bike. Had he noticed me, he would have looked up and there would have been no shot. So I would call this street photography.

In the second picture the woman is sitting in the street, outside her house. I've sat down on a little bench to put a new roll of film in my camera and am talking with an older woman sitting next to me, who asks me, jokingly, whether I want to marry her daughter, the subject of the picture. I respond that I'll ask her daughter's husband for permission, as I take the picture. Street photograph or outdoor portrait? Probably the latter, no?




Chiang Mai




Bangkok

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Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine
 
I've never been sure what "street photography" might be. The definition seems fluid. In too many instances it appears to be exactly what it says it is, pictures of anonymous people walking down the street. To me, about 99.9% of these pictures are as boring as the description sounds.

But I really like candid, documentary photographs, be they of people engaged in some activity that is interesting or of human-created artifacts such as buildings, monuments and signs. So, instead of using the term "street photography", I prefer Walker Evans description of photography "in documentary style".

Here's a blog that touches on those 99.9% of street photos I mentioned:

thephotofundamentalist.com/general-discussion/is-street-photography-killing-itself/#more-2897
 
I think that there is a big difference between street photography which could be anything taken on the street and what is good. Plus I really hate that term street photography but I do use it.
 
airfrogusmc - Paraphrasing the first sentence of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Teju Cole writes, "All bad photos are alike, but each good photograph is good in its own way." There's a lot of bad photograph around, not just street photography, but any genre label isn't based on quality.

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Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine
 
airfrogusmc - Paraphrasing the first sentence of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Teju Cole writes, "All bad photos are alike, but each good photograph is good in its own way." There's a lot of bad photograph around, not just street photography, but any genre label isn't based on quality.


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Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine

Did I say that there wasn't a lot of bad photography out there? I think I shoot in what many would label street including myself. I just don't like that term or label.
 
It is easy. You go OUT and you take pictures where you are considering it as the street. Anything not in macro range taken where is the street. This is it, simple, isn't it?
If you want to know more in details, here is RFF sub-forum for it:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=197
It is under name of Frank Jackson as the Mentor with Coffee. :)

Someone needs to pass the cup like I said above. Mr Jackson is too busy I guess & I understand so not complaining just wish to see the thread thrive once again.
 
I wish you could take over the Street Photography forum as a mentor. Your love of the art is apparent & apparently Mr Jackson is busy. He was really good but never around anymore.

To me street photography is simply photographing the everyday aspect of life in the visual of where one is at at a given time when one presses the shutter.

Thanks but I actually like Franks kinda hands off approach. I love his work so I wish he would post a little more to.
 
I think street photography is changing so rapidly because it's always been something that can't exist without substantial amounts of people meeting/intermixing - that's why it's always been (mostly) about where they meet and intersect the most, namely urban areas.

I've shot 'street' (or the much more precisely phrased term Nick Turpin came up with) in small towns and in big cities -- good examples of the genre can be had either way but I think it's a lot easier and more interesting in a big city.
 
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