Street photography

Street photography generally refers to photographs made in public places — not only streets, but parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and myriad other settings — often but not always featuring people going about their everyday lives. In one sense it can be thought of as a branch of documentary photography but unlike traditional documentary its chief aim — or at least its chief effect — is seldom to document a particular subject, but rather to create photographs which strongly demonstrate the photographer's vision of the world. Good street photography often ends up being good documentary photography without really trying, especially after the passage of a few years, but unlike documentary it seldom has an explicit social agenda or rhetorical intent. It tends to be more ironic and distanced from its subject matter.

Like photojournalism, street photography often concentrates on a single human moment, caught at a decisive (or deliberately indecisive) moment. However, unlike photojournalism, the moment depicted usually has no significance in and of itself except to the interested parties and the photographer. A stolen kiss on a street corner; a man jumping a puddle; a woman lost in her thoughts in a diner; a shopping trolley glowing in the last rays of sun: these are the bread and butter of street photography but unlikely to cut much ice with a photojournalist's picture editor.

Street photography is often thought of as having reached a zenith between roughly 1940 and 1970 when many of the seminal works were created, coinciding (although it was hardly a coincidence) with the introduction of the lightweight, high-quality 35mm rangefinder camera, and exemplified in particular by the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. But in truth street photography has a much longer pedigree than that and it has continued to evolve in the decades since.

Street photography, like most other branches of photography, has been driven by both aesthetic and technological innovations, and often the introduction of new technology has had a profound impact on the prevailing aesthetic. The introduction of small, fast, high-quality digital cameras in recent years has already begun to affect the aesthetic paradigm and seems to have been responsible for an explosion of image-making in the genre.

Street photography has never been a particularly commercial branch of photography and yet it holds an abiding fascination for photographers and audiences alike, not least because the visual drama of 'the street', however defined, provides a subject which is capable of being continually revisited and reinterpreted. In this respect at least, street photography is one of the more reflexive of photographic disciplines: unlike documentary photography or photojournalism, with which it shares many features, street photography is often not primarily concerned with its subject, but with the way the subject is represented. The street photographs which anchor themselves in the mind of the viewer are generally distinctive not so much for what is seen, but the way it is seen: the quotidian rendered extraordinary.

Like jazz, street photography has a relatively small base of canonical subjects (for example, crowds, the urban landscape) which are endlessly reworked and re-seen. For this reason, the most interesting works in the genre are arguably as much about photography as they are about anything else. Perhaps this is another reason why the genre seems such a rewarding one for its practitioners.

History

Aesthetics

Practitioners

(please add dates where possible and keep in chronological order of birth)

• Eugene Atget
• Brassai
• Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Weegee
• Walker Evans
• Diane Arbus (1923 - 1971)
• Robert Frank
• Garry Winogrand
• William Klein
• William Eggleston
• Lee Friedlander
• Martin Parr

Techniques

Behavioral

Overcoming shyness

Shyness and Street photography seem to be mutually exclusive. However most successful street photographers have started as shy photographers. Start by trying to be stealth and using long lenses. Sometimes the use of extreme wide angles and appearing to be pointing the camera somewhere else than the subject can help. Other photographers stand at one point on the street and wait for the subject to walk into view of the camera.

Invisibility

It is said that Henri Cartier Bresson would wrap a large handkerchief around his camera and pretend to be blowing his nose while he took the picture. There are many variations to the stealthiness theme, some involving the use of waist-level finders in cameras but the general idea is to keep the subject/s from being aware that they are being photographed. Another aspect of invisibility involves "blending-in" with the crowd. Dressing like an archaetypical foreign correspondent, wearing a Tilby hat, photographer's vest and camera bag generally will guarantee that everyone is aware of you. Observe the ways of the crowd and try to dress and behave in an inconspicous manner, according to the circumstances.

Some photographers thrive on directness, however. Martin Parr, for example, is typically quite open and direct about his business, and photographs using a hard-to-hide ring flash unit on a large camera. Street photographers who are fond of wide-angle lenses will often work so close to their subjects that they surely must be seen. Each practitioner must find their own balance.

While exceptions such as Beat Streuli exist, in general street photography made from a distance, with a long lens, is considered flat and uninteresting -- the dominant aesthetic has stressed the photographer's presence "in" the scene, potentially interacting (subtly or otherwise) with the subjects but nearly always from a nearby, almost tactile, distance.

Since the days of Paul Strand, some photographers (such as Helen Levitt) have also used trick lenses which shoot to the side, rather than directly in front of the camera. Leica and other manufacturers have long made such mirror attachments.

Photographic

Shutter Speed

Most street photography is done handheld; also, the subjects might be moving rather fast. This implies the use of rather fast shutter speeds, usually over 1/60". However, some images can be enhanced by good use of slow shutter speeds to show motion.

Aperture & Depth of Field

A medium aperture, in the range of f/4 to f/8 will generally be preferred for fast shooting in daylight. The extended Depth of Field will render the subjects in focus even if they're moving or the photographer cannot exercise careful focusing. For static subjects, the use of large apertures, f/2.8 or wider, can help separate the subject from the background through shallow Depth of Field.

Equipment for Street Photography

Street photography has been made with equipment as varied as celphones to 4x5 view cameras. The "classic" street photo camera has been the 35mm Leica rangefinder. The attributes praised by Leica users define a canonical set of features desired in Street Photo equipment.

A good street camera should be light, quick to operate, quiet and of good quality. 35mm cameras have dominated this ideal until recent years when digital cameras appeared. Currently there is something of a gap -- compact digitals are inconspicuous, quiet, and light, but slow in operation. Digital SLRs are quick to operate but generally large, heavy, and relatively loud. This gap, however, closes a bit with each passing year of technological improvement.

The #1 criterion in choosing a street photo camera, unless some external consideration (such as large negative or stealth) is of interest, is that the camera be comfortable to operate in the hand of the specific photographer.

Legalities

Publication

Invasion of Privacy

In 1890, Samuel Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis published "The Right to Privacy," which made their case for recognition of invasion of privacy as a legal tort.

Fifteen years later, in the case Pavesich v. New England Life Insurance Company, a Georgia court was the first to rule on the balance between the right to privacy over freedom of the press, when it found that Mr Pavesich had been wronged by the appearance of an unauthorized advertisement in which his photograph appeared. The court at that time ruled that commercial usage did not have the same press protections as other forms of use.

Earlier, in 1893, the case Corliss v. Walker had set the related precedent that non-commercial use, in this case an unauthorized biography, was indeed an example where press freedom's inherent public interest could not be overruled by the right to privacy. These two cases along with the abovementioned "The Right to Privacy" have become the basis for almost all US law with respect to the balance between freedom of expression and individual privacy.

Some other restrictions of photography exist in the US, but most have to do with either commercial use of a space (such as forbidding photography inside a private building) or national security (such as restrictions on airport security areas or military installations).

Important works of Street Photography

• The Decisive Moment (Henri Cartier-Bresson)
• The Man in the Crowd (Garry Winogrand)
• The Animals (Garry Winogrand)
• The Americans (Robert Frank)
• New York is Good and Good for You (William Klein)
• William Eggleston's Guide (William Eggleston)
• A Kind of Rapture (Robert Bergman)

Further Reading

• Bystander: A History of Street Photography (Joel Meyerowitz & Colin Westerbeck, Bulfinch, 1994; ISBN 0821217550)

Links

• Streetphoto: The street photography mailing list
• PhotoPermit.Org: A site and forum on privacy and photographic freedom issues
• PinkheadedBug: John Brownlow's Site for his own street photography, including numerous tips and opinions
• PhotoRant: Kevin Bjorke's site includes street resources and more opinions
• iN-Public: A group site, probably the busiest street photo gallery on the web
• photo.net Street & Documentary Forum: A subsection of messages on photo.net
• Street Photography: Roy Caratozzolo's site includes street images, opinions, and examples of street photography
• Streetphotos.net : Street photography website with a forum and photographs, from South Asia
• Full Frame Images: Black and White Street Photography - Shot in the USA during the 1970's by Robert M Johnson