Contemporary Street Photography: Where Can I Find the Good Stuff?

By Andrew Kochanowski

"Street photographers" tend to dislike the very term, but, having failed to mint a better phrase, it will just have to do. Whether you blame the Internet or limitless card capacity, there are now literally tens of thousands of photographers publicly taking a crack at it. As its practitioners know, forget the banality of evil—try the banality of much of online street photography. (Here's Blake Andrews' take on that.) So who can we blame for foisting this stuff on us?

Nick Turpin and his In-Public street photography collective, for starters. In 2000, Turpin brought together an almost unfairly talented group of (mostly) English street photographers into an online group. Who knew that while the 1960s street photography cohort were finishing up, and the snapshot aesthetic became the new vogue, there were still people looking for something un-posed and not newsworthy to photograph? Nick did. It looked easy, too—all those quirky juxtapositions, geometric assemblies, and sneaky body parts. Suddenly, street photography was no longer the province of cranky loners dipping Tri-X in their bathroom. No, what we got instead was a flood of Tri-X-y stuff with Magnum-sized watermarks. And much of it descended on Flickr and other open sites as soon as bandwidth got cheap.

It is fashionable—and mostly true—to say that Flickr is the undisputed repository for self-indulgence. But since at least the mid-2000s, at least one dark corner of the Flickerverse has housed what is possibly the central hub for street photography. A curious pre-Facebook mix of social media and photography, the Hardcore Street Photography group (HCSP), which looks like every one of the millions of other Flickr groups, became the largest street photography meeting-point in the world. This 46,000-member group, if nothing else, deserves a footnote in the history of photography, if for nothing other than providing a concentrated place to look for decent street photography.

For a number of years, HCSP has had two functions. First, and most obviously to the newcomer, it hosts a self-described, heavily "curated" pool of photos. Second, it serves as a clearinghouse of news, personality, gossip, and announcements in, of, and around street photography. It is an amorphous place: HCSP has been administered by a small, unabashedly undemocratic, often-changing set of photographers for years. Unlike Eggleston and his suitcase full of slides arriving at John Szarkowski's door, all it takes to try "get into the pool" at HCSP is a Flickr account and an uploaded photo. The administrators at HCSP pick and choose from roughly 200 photo submissions daily, and, with Beria-like efficiency, weed out well more than 99%. That makes it approximately 600,000 images a year that pass through the site. Once or twice a week an image or two from this mass makes its way into the pool.

The pool currently has a little more than 3,000 images. The interesting, the strange, the contentious, the difficult to decipher, or just plain great—subject to, of course, continual debate whether the photos are actually meaningless, self-indulgent effluvia, whether there is such a thing as street photography, and whether street photography may happen indoors, at the beach, at a party, or in a hurricane.

HCSP's role as a street photography clearinghouse has extended from the first mention of Vivian Meier’s auction-purchased negatives ("What Do I Do With This Stuff (Other Than Giving It To You?") to giving previously-hidden first-rate street photographers a wide audience for both old and new work.

Don Hudson, Girl with Billboard

Several organized candid photography collectives have formed around the world in recent years. Though not all do this in the same way, unlike the physical-world counterparts in the 1970s, these working collectives are organized around geography (like Seconds2Real, comprised of street photographers from Austria and Germany) or quasi-geography (like Un-Posed, which draws attention to Polish photographers), and around style (like Burn My Eye). They tend to use online platforms to aggregate portfolios, present group edits, organize public shows, and provide on-demand print or book distribution. And there are Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook stream images and announcements daily.

Traditional publishing has been—er, slow to join this party. Thames & Hudson did put out Street Photography Now in the fall of 2010, packaging older Alex Webb, Martin Parr, and Bruce Gilden—presumably for placement purposes—with a number of lesser-known street photographers, many of whom are actively associated with the wider online street photography world. That brick and mortar book was not without controversy over, ironically, accusations of having misappropriated text from a street photography blog, Michael David Murphy's 2point8.

The more relevant physical world counterpart, made possible by the collaborative aspect of contemporary street photography, is on-demand magazine and book publishing. Street photography has spawned serious discussion and curation in new media that is almost entirely divorced from the traditional fine art gallery and criticism worlds. Street Reverb, an online magazine, itself an outgrowth of HCSP, has a clear view of the current street photography scene bundled with intelligent curation of ongoing projects.

Whether it has been the influence of Martin Parr or something in the water, the physical center of contemporary street photography is firmly in Great Britain. Street photography has been the focus of at least two sprawling festivals in the U.K. in recent years, at Format Festival, Derby, and the London Festival of Photography. The Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff, Wales, actively showcases contemporary street photography—as it should since its founders had a close connection to the HCSP world.

The confluence of technology and the resulting opportunity to discuss, review, share, critique, dismiss, and fight over the very nature of the genre has been, in a very real sense, revelatory. There is an almost unlimited flood of images that is in real time being produced, sifted, and curated into higher and higher quality piles. Photographers have simultaneously become editors and publishers, blurring a traditional line. Having access to each other's work, photographer/editors have in recent years melded and produced spectacular—and unexpected—group edits (here's an example). There is in a very real sense a continuing conversation between literally hundreds of active photographers over the boundaries and nature of the street photography umbrella.

Ten years ago, cheap, on-demand publishing and social media that disseminate good work from all of this output did not really exist. It's not your Daddy's decisive moment any more. 

Andrew

Andrew Kochanowski is a photographer and member of the Burn My Eye and Un-Posed collectives. He has written for TOP before.

[Ed. Note: As a general matter of policy, I don't allow comments from people who are plugging their own sites, for the simple and understandable reason that if I allowed it, a lot more people would come here just to do that and we'd get swamped. If you know of a good site it's not off limits to mention it, especially if you have something cogent to say about it, but please refrain from plugging your own. Thanks.

Same thing with links to individual pictures—by all means link to them if they're pertinent and you have something to say about them or they illustrate your point (Ken Wajda's comment—first "Featured Comment" below—is a perfect example of this), but if it's nothing but a naked plug, it won't be published.

Also, be aware that there are certain sites I will not link to because of previous difficulties with individuals associated with them, so if you're puzzled by a non-inclusion, it's possible it has nothing to do with you and also nothing to do with the quality of photography at the site.]

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Wajda: "Street Photography is so subjective because we are also attached to the photos—we were there. But the images are of strangers, no viewer has that connection so it has to have a story or a 'ah ha' moment for the viewer.

"Here's one I shot in Denver last week that I think has that extra something. Complete luck. Right place, right time.

"Street is really probably better called 'Life' photography, as that's what I'm shooting, the moments of life that pass in front of me. In 50 years, when most of these images have been lost, then these will mean more. That's one reason why Vivian's work is so captivating.

"Having worked for 15 years as a photojournalist for a daily newspaper, we used to call these 'roamers' because we'd roam around looking for them.  And we'd use them to fill in space or give a quick weather report."

Mike replies: Another problem in my view with the term "street" is that an overly rigid interpretation of it might limit what people think of as its possibilities. For instance, Erwitt made what I think of as "street" photographs in museums.

Carl Weese's first picture in the post just below this one isn't a street photograph, even though it's a photograph of a street (well, that's a road, I guess, not a street, but you know what I mean). And based on my understanding of the term, this photograph by Juan Buhler seems to be a "street photograph," somehow, even though it's a picture of the ocean.

Ed Hawco's rant: "Back in the early days of 'Web 2.0' I was a big fan of the so-called 'democratization' of media and all that stuff about 'crowd sourcing' and the 'hive mind.' I liked the fact that anyone could throw anything into the ring and get it seen and commented on. But now that I've seen it in action for a decade I mostly see it as the technologically-enabled extrapolation of group-think. As a result, the more a site goes on about users 'voting up' the faster I run away, because after a while the things they're voting up all look the same.

"I see this on a lot of photography sites that have 'street photography' categories, such as 500px and 1x. While there is some good work in there, you don't appreciate it as much when you have to slog through countless repetitions of the same old derivative tropes, again and again. I mean, how many too-contrasty black and white photos of a person walking past a sign that somehow mimics them do we need? Do we really need more photos of random urban beggars randomly passed out on park benches? Old people are not more interesting just because you crank up the 'clarity' slider on their faces!

"I'm still a fan of the Web and digital technologies, but I want them to enable individual talent and human curation and not just amplify the choice of the mob. I've come to realize the importance of a curator's or editor's view, and how that is a skill that should be celebrated intstead of kicked in the pants and declared 'elitist.' After all, when 'The Borg' (Star Trek reference) curates everything, everything looks like it was curated by The Borg. (End of rant.)"

Mike adds: Ed, you might be interested in the interview with Andy Adams of Flak Photo just posted at BreakThru Radio. He addresses a lot of the same concerns you're bringing up. (Note that the controls for the audio at the link are counterintuitive—they should show up in a bar at the bottom of the browser, not the page. Oh, and by the way, it's good to listen to while browsing pictures at Flak Photo.)

Ricardo Silva Cordeiro: Really interesting comments here. One phrase by John Krumm caught my attention: 'I don't do much street photography myself (too shy to point at strangers).' I'm a shy person myself (technically speaking I'm an introvert) and one of the things that surprised me when I decided to embark on 'street photography' was how empowered I felt doing it. It permited me to connect to the world in a way that I'd never experienced before. I've always been interested on this theme, on how to handle this brief contact with strangers, and it's been surprising to discover how many of the great photographers were/are actually shy (Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of them)."

Mike replies: Interesting. I believe Juan Buhler has spoken of something similar. Maybe he'll jump in and confirm or deny.

Juan responds: "I'm coming late to this as I'm nowadays traveling down the Americas full-time instead of spending my days at a desk with internet access.

"About shyness, yes, I consider myself shy, although I've worked on it since high school. Street photography is one, maybe the biggest way for me to work on my shyness. Not much more to say, other than it could be argued that we shy types are actually 'hiding' behind a camera—taking photos in the street lets you get close to people, but because you're taking photos you don't have to get too close.

"About the general topic of street photography...I tend to agree, of all things, with the comment by Eric Perlberg: 'mediocre tribute band' is what I think about when I see most street photos out there. Including mine. But the few photographers Eric mentions strike me to be somewhere in the spectrum between 'pretentious' and 'blah,' and don't do much for me either. In other words: what's out there mostly sucks, and my work is middle of the road. :-)

"For a long time I've had the feeling that my photos are stuck in this uninteresting, cliché, 'already done' place. But the impetus to go out and make photos, I find, doesn't have much to do with any of the above. I am not asking or answering any important questions, or doing anything that the people who like to write pretentious sentences about their photography claim they are doing. I just like to shoot."

Dan: "I shoot this...style...of photography because it's the only one that feels...real...to me. I'm really not interested in taking a picture of a flower, or finding the exact shutter speed / f-stop combination to perfectly capture the full range of the subtle tonal gradations of this afternoon sun splattered on a spackled wall. But I am interested in the man over there having a cigarette, staring at something in the distance."

Herman Krieger takes a somewhat more literal view of "street photography":

Comments

[Kenneth Wajda]

Street Photography is so subjective because we are also attached to the photos--we were there. But the images are of strangers, no viewer has that connection so it has to have a story or a "ah-ha" moment for the viewer.

Here's one I shot in Denver last week that I think has that extra something. Complete luck. Right place, right time.

http://kennethwajda.com/coloradofaces/gallery/content/L1071367-Edit_large.html From my Colorado Faces series.

Street is really probably better called "Life" photography, as that's what I'm shooting, the moments of life that pass in front of me. In 50 years, when most of these images have been lost, then these will mean more. That's one reason why Vivian's work is so captivating.

Having worked for 15 years as a photojournalist for a daily newspaper, we used to call these "roamers" because we'd roam around looking for them. And we'd use them to fill in space or give a quick weather report.

[Ken White]

Burn My Eye has been on my links list for some time. The mix of photographers and content is more than interesting. The site does not change much so I check in every 2-3 weeks.

Street portraits have become part of my regular shooting. They are not quite the same as straight ahead street photography but something similar. Now if I could just do good street portraits...

[John Krumm]

I don't do much street photography myself (too shy to point at strangers) but when I lead my class of middle school photography students around town that's more or less what they are attempting. It's always interesting to see the results, and usually (not always) if a student comes back with a couple hundred shots they took in 40 minutes there are a few stand-out ones to talk about. Of course I've had students admit (and complain) that their best shots were taken by just pressing the shutter while blindly swinging the camera.

I'm willing to bet that if someone walks the streets with a digital camera on a high enough shutter speed and doesn't really pay much attention to the subjects, randomly pointing the camera around people, perhaps taking 800 photos, then returning home to edit with great care, you will have some quite good street photographs (and this is not an insult to street photographers--it still takes work to edit).

[Saul]

I thought it was the very proliferation of photography and the interweb that meant that 'street' photography had died...I thought we'd all agreed we were just doing it for fun...I too think it's difficult to find the good stuff but maybe 'good stuff' is just a load of conventions that one group of photographers adhere too...maybe the digital revolution means that like with music (I know, some people will consider this a sacrilegious statement) photographic 'Art' is dead...

[hugh crawford]

The main problem with street photography as a genre is the name.

People outside the photo/art world think it has something to do with taking pictures of streets and people familiar with the term visibly cringe when they hear it.

Depending on whom I am talking to I say:
"Evanescent Photo Ethnography within the Built Environment"
"Pictures of the back of peoples heads"
"Pictures of people on cellphones"
"Pictures of people photographing each other"
"Pictures of people connected by diagonal lines in the background"
"Pictures of people waiting"

Anything but "street photography" , although I do do a lot of pictures of pavement...

[Gordon Lewis]

As a lifelong street photographer myself, I appreciate Andrew taking the time and making the effort to provide links to "the good stuff." This, however, begs the question of what makes it "the good stuff." How does one differentiate great street photos from the rest? Andrew toys with the question and makes clear that most "street shooters" don't have the answer, but doesn't really answer the question himself. He may even be intentionally avoiding an answer, not that I'd blame him. Kenneth Wajda's description is a more forthcoming yet still not definitive. Anyone care to take a shot at it?

[Steve Jones]

I go outside and take photos of things. Because, until recently, I lived in large cities, the outcome often fell into the category of 'street,' with or without human subjects. However, I like the broader interpretation, even as semantically ambiguous as street is, that Kenneth mentioned, that being "life."

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Thank you for a good essay on the state of affairs for "street photography", Andrew. It's interesting to see such collectives forming, similar to other birds-of-a-feather photo groups (i.e. landscapers, birders, wildlife, concert...). Anything that encourages people to use their cameras, their eyes, and their creative juices is terrific in my book.

I'd also like to take this chance to remark that your "Burn My Eye" group features some terrific one-liners. I've visited it several times in recent months (something I cannot say for Flickr). It speaks well to the good sense to keep a tight group of similarly skilled, but geographically and conceptually disparate, photographers in common curation.

[Robert Roaldi]

Editing and curating are always required. No reason to ever expect otherwise.

Web screening is in its infancy, hard to sift through all the noise. I guess screening used to be done by magazines, now it's done by sites like this one.

[Bill Mitchell]

Unfortunately, it's nearly all crap!
The problem is probably not the photography, but the editing (actually, the lack thereof).

[Stan B.]

Gordon- Jonathan Auch provides several keen insights into street photography, along with some exemplary images, here:

http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com/2012/11/street-shooter-jonathan-auch.html

[Ahem]

I'm surprised that street photography as a genre is still going strong, despite the legal quagmire of model and property releases, and the boogeymen of terrorism and pedophilia which street photographers too often get undeservedly associated with.

I do very little street photography as it's too voyeuristic to my tastes; I wouldn't like my picture taken by a stranger. Asking prior permission destroys the whole idea of street photography, so I mostly stick to models with my people photography.

[While I take your points, the idea that you need "model and property releases" for non-commercial street photography is a myth. You don't. —Mike]

[Jock Elliott]

I found this interesting analysis of the compositional techniques of Henri Cartier Bresson here: http://www.adammarelliphoto.com/2011/09/henri-cartier-bresson/

My sense is that a lot of modern street photography lacks strong composition.

Further, my online readings lead me to believe that some street photographers have adopted an "intrusive" style of shooting, rather than trying to capture candid shots of people being themselves without being noticed as photographers.

[Marek Fogiel]

Call me obsolete, but I cannot digest easily colour street photography, which disregards colour, it becomes utter banality.
This is why I refuse to post any of my street photos in the groups mentioned above.

I can stand Costa Manos, Jeff Melmerstein or even Joel Meyerowitz, but I cannot stand Average Joe in colour, it is simply revolting.

Mixing B&W and colour in one showcase just does not make sense to me.

[Dave]

I love Kenneth's "Life Photography" moniker. I use the term "Street Photography" to characterize my work when people ask, but I don't shoot much traditional Street. I go for little slices of life, or shots that help me tell a little story. I don't consider what I shoot profound or genre changing, but just tiny glimpses of the world held in time.

I like what I do, so I try not worry about the labels and just do it.

[Eric Perlberg]

Rant warning.

There is street photography and there is street photography. When I see stuff on the websites identified above I have a similar feeling to when I see mediocre tribute bands. I'm honestly affronted by it (I can be and you can feel however you choose to feel but I'm familiar with the topic).

There has been a vernacular movement in photography for several generations. The photographers working in the 50s and 60s where breaking new ground much as the French painters in the 1800s who left the studio to paint in the wild.

There is a huge William Klein-Daido Moriyama exhibit at Tate Modern right now, an interesting HCB exhibit at Sommerset house featuring work by Leiter, Herzog and others from the 60s and a show at the Barbican featuring many big names from the 60s and 70s and I almost never see modern street which comes close to even the more mediocre work in any of these exhibits.

I had the fortune to run into Joel Meyerowitz in London several years ago and in a general sort of discussion this topic came up. Meyerowitz made a comment about street photography too often having the sophistication of one line jokes, the easy to get punchline. Then he talked about other more sophisticated types of literature.

The creative energy to explore elements of the urban landscape that spurred the early streetmasters has moved on. The immediacy between photographer and subject that characterised that earlier work lives on. As examples I'll cite just a few of my own faves; Klavdij Sluban, Jacob Aue Sobol, John Maclean, Ed Panar, Anders Petersen, Rinko Kawauchi, Rei Sato and JH Engstrom to name a few. The work from these artists strikes me as from the same tradition but so much deeper in the questions that are asked.

Compare and judge for yourself.

End rant. :)

[adamct]

"this photograph by Juan Buhler seems to be a "street photograph," somehow, even though it's a picture of the ocean"

...ahhh, but it's not a picture of the ocean. It's a picture of a woman in a fleeting, unexpected and possibly humorous position. THAT is why it is "street" photography.

[MJFerron]

Mike says " Another problem in my view with the term "street" is that an overly rigid interpretation of it might limit what people think of as its possibilities. For instance, Erwitt made what I think of as "street" photographs in museums."

Agree. (I'm a fan of Mr. Erwitt's work also)

Personally I classify all such work as candids. Setting could be a party, a street, a fair, etc. The location is less important than that special moment, expression or person that made the shot worthwhile.

[Jake]

Hmm. What defines "the good stuff?" Getting a group of like minded thinkers to form a clique, declaring your standard for good, better, and best, and then forcing that down everyone's throats, while dismissing those who "just don't get it?" Photographer as curator is always a slippery slope, because there are always the possibilities of jealousies, cliques, and sentimentalism when judging someone else's work vs. your own. I like a handful of Andrew's images, and some of the guys that are referenced here, such as DirtyHarry, Don Hudson, and Nick Turpin, are easy arguments as being a cut above. But overall, this "good stuff" argument is propaganda and veiled self-promotion. Pass.

[Dan]

I shoot this ... style ... of photography because it's the only one that feels ... real ... to me. I'm really not interested in taking a picture of a flower, or finding the exact shutter speed/fstop combination to perfectly capture the full range of the subtle tonal gradations of this afternoon sun splattered on a spackled wall. But I am interested in the man over there having a cigarette, staring at something in the distance.

[pepeye]

My main complaint about so-called street photography is that most of it seems so incomplete. I see a lot of photos that show good-to-great technical skill but lack any element that provokes any emotional response or feeling. The photographers taking these photographs know the "words" but seem not to speak the language. If it doesn't make you feel something, then its just trophy hunting.

[Paul Amyes]

Street photography or delusions of Bresson as I tend to refer to it is something I do. Unlike many I don't find it a rich seam; if I make 12 to 20 good shots a year that has been a very good year. Very few people can edit ruthlessly enough and that accounts for all the floatsam and jetsam that photo hosting sites are full of.

[psu]

I agree with Bill Mitchell.

[Sarge]

Anyone care to take a shot at it?

@Gordon Lewis - How about:

Street photography is wedding photography without a bride, a groom, a client...
(not necessarily taken with "Canon's cannons")?

[Daniel S.]

I believe the big problem of Street Photography, which the digital age has only exacerbated, is that there's little to no consensus as to what constitutes a "good" photograph.

Consider Ctein's Apollo-Soyuz in Floodlights from a couple Print Offers back, for instance. Do you think someone would've looked at it and said "man, if I had taken that photo I would've deleted it without thinking twice"? or for Charles Cramer's Aspens in Fog? doubtful, yet that's a comment I've heard from many in regards to some notable Street Photographers, and not only from DPR pundits as one would be led to believe.

Thus, how are we to edit our own work if our trash is another man's treasure and viceversa? we can rely on our own judgement and strive to be true to our artistic vision without regards to what others might say, of course, but since it's all so subjective we end up in the same problem of being surrounded by (what's to us) subpar work and, in fact, there's no way to say it's not the current situation.

The problem of defining what constitutes Street Photography is relatively trivial: it doesn't matter, if it works it works, and whether it fits some label or other will have little effect on the photograph itself. But I think the problem of defining what constitutes good Street Photography is an important one and one we should try to settle before we 'curate' too much.

[Dan]

I also have my own personal, unsubstantiated theory as to why 'street photography' is so popular presently. It seems that the most highly esteemed street photographer in the community is not HCB or Frank, as one might expect, but Winogrand.

There are several videos on Youtube of Winogrand in action, from various documentaries through the years. We don't have video of HCB or Frank shooting. I think it was 2point8 that pointed out that Winogrand was perhaps the world's first 'digital' photographer - that is, high-volume, shoot 'em all and let the editor sort 'em out later. In addition, Winogrand's eye for an 'interesting picture' only required that a picture be a 'problem' - that is, a good picture need only contain some kind of inscrutable or enigmatic element that resisted interpretation to be interesting. A jauntily skewed hat, or a limb laid out at an awkward angle, or, as Winogrand pointed out, a person holding a hat in midair above someone's head - is she taking the hat off or putting the hat on?

Of course, if you squint hard enough at the pictures you've taken, all pictures become an interesting 'problem' and therefore a 'good' 'street photography' picture worth posting online. Perhaps that explains the flood.

[Mathew Hargreaves]

"Street" seems to be the descriptive part that people do not like. After all, it could be an avenue, a boulevard, a country road, a path, or even an aircraft runway. The odds are you are not running, jogging, excersizing, or dodging bullets (unless it is a train coming at you). The one thing that you are doing is walking and observing.
What about Walking Photography, or Observational Walking Photography. People could claim they suffer from OWP. And eye doctors and shoe manufacturers are unable to find a cure. Which is usually the case as there is no financial benefit to them if they find a cure, But they might have high-mileage shoe models with all-weather traction.

Personally, I like: Roadkill Photography, or Crapshoot Photography. They seem more accurate to the hazards and the end result.

[Richard Tugwell]

I'll go along with Jake's comments earlier, and also maybe add that this could be extended to whoever it is that defines fine-art photography. Curators and gallery owners etc. As for current street photography such as we see referenced her, for my taste too much of it is focused on the single image - a string of mostly one-liners that might catch the eye, but which don't persist because they have little to say apart from their own little joke. Get's a bit tiresome. I like a photographer who has something to say, and I don't believe you can really say something (beyond the often ambiguous aforesaid one-liner) unless you present a coherent body of work. Look at Frank or Evans - I doubt any one image would make it past many of today's curators...

[Bear.]

For me, street photography = candid portraits of strangers. Given that a good portrait of someone you know is hard enough (studio or candid), no wonder there are so many bad images out there.

[Flaneur]

We set up a website to discuss aspects of street photography in August this year because of lots of these comments that have been made in the comments to this post. Street photography is just a name that has become accepted for a genre of photography it could be urban photography it could be anything but once a name sticks to a genre changing that naming convention would need lots of people to collectively decide that a new name had more relevance or they invent a new genre that there images more closely fit within. This is why we are still using street photography as a genre name for a particular type of photography. It is a name that has had academic and museum endorsement yet that was a while ago (1960's and 1970's) and for some this means that it might be in need of a fresh approach. This is were the flickr groups come in because they are photographers just doing it and at some point the work will get seen. As it is important to document our society and how it looks, at every opportunity. Because, if we do not visually produce records/documents/images of what we are doing and looking like we lose this information and it will become easier for us to be manipulated by the elites of our societies.
This is the power of street photography yet it is rarely mentioned, that we can see the world though the vision of everyone that practices this art and that vision is accumulative as the more practitioners of the art of street photography the more we build a library of images that show how life is being lived at any one point in time.

[Colin Work]

I too have a problem with the term "street photography". But I use it simply because it happens to be a widely used term which seems to match some of my pictures.

But I never go out to do "street photography" as I might, say, go to do "landscape photography". For me (to paraphrase Lennon) street photography is what happens when you're making other plans. I think in my head street photography is "found photography" - stuff I see which I didn't expect but says something to me.

It's also very personal - I don't share that much of it. I rather like the term "life photography" though I think for me "my life photography" would be better.

Colin

[Charlie Kirk]

The problem with the HCSP pool is that it is a self perpetuating aesthetic. Take a look at the pool right now. An abundance of perspective jokes, cut off limbs and soulless multi subject pictures. Those with aspirations to get into the pool will no doubt look at the pool and shoot this way. I find it a real shame. I'd like to see far fewer shots in the pool, but shots of real quality. Perhaps that way, the types of shots I have described above might finally be put to rest and people might concentrate on taking photos with a bit more meaning or longevity.

[Fabio Masetti]

http://matteoalvazzi.com/

street photography and contemporary art

[Zvonimir MW Tosic]

Why 'street' photography? Because it is the good environment for us to face with our personal issues, fears, exploration of communication language with ourselves and with others. It is about a set of existential questions about our conscious understanding of what it means to be one, and what it means to be many.

It is also about breaching that horrendous threshold of our limited conscious experience.

Our conscious experience reaches only up to 0.3 of the second approximately. Everything that happens entirely and it was faster than 0.3 seconds, our conscious mind won't properly register and store as the cause-action-effect event. Say if your finger gets pinched and 0.2 seconds later the nerve on the way to brain is been broken or the signal cancelled, our mind won't register the pain despite real damage.

When holding a camera and pressing a shutter release, the film or sensor captures the moment we, most of the time, cannot consciously experience or see. In truest sense, we never see what we photograph — we see that later. Long exposures are a different, but similar problem, in which we face other inadequacy of our conscious mind: lack of factual storage capacity and inevitable immediate data corruption.

How well data is preserved depends on our training of the conscious experience. Photography as a branch of visual arts is helping us explore microseconds, that do testify we have existed in that very brief period of time — albeit without direct memory of it. However, in form of photograph that memory is been given back to us as a visual narrative, which helps our conscious mind encompass and face itself: through the lens of the camera as a — finally! — conscious witness to a scene, and by the gazes of others, being witnessed by others and therefore existentially confirmed.

[lith]

I do all right.

http://flic.kr/p/duTxzy

No, I have no idea who the woman is.

[robert e]

Let's not forget that some of the masters, like Daido Moriyama and Josef Koudelka, are still at work and arguably still setting the bar. And Gueorgui Pinkhassov is taking the Leiter/Metzger approach to a new level.

As far as terminology, at least part of the difficulty is that 'street photographers' are a diverse and a particularly--perhaps understandably--prickly bunch, as much, or more, resistant to a defining term as they are desirous for one.

As far as I'm concerned, HCB gave us the perfect term: "a la suivette". Why not adopt it as we have "a la prima" for painting, "croquis" for drawing, or "guerrilla" for warfare? Obviously, it never took, I would guess because prickly non-french-speaking street photographers and aficionados considered it too "foreign" and pretentious-sounding. But it works for me.

@Eric Perlberg:

An articulate and provocative rant. I don't agree with all of your list, but I think I see what you're getting at and I think Gueorgui Pinkhassov may deserve a place on it, if he isn't already there.

[Tom K.]

Eric Kim has a great street photography blog.

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/

[robert e]

Oops! That should have been "a la sauvette", not "suivette". Apologies. (Good thing everyone's moved on.)

[Geoff Belfer]

As I'm visiting the USA at the moment (from the UK) i will give my 2 cence worth instead of my 2 pennyths worth - Street photography is simply raw life captured on the streets in an urban environment. To my eye the best photographs of this genre tend to have a humorous or ironic element to them illustrating what a wonderful and weirded species we are.