A small guide to Street Photography PT.1
I decided to share on my blog this small guide for those who are now approaching the genre but also for those who want to have an extra reading on Street Photography.
Venice Beach (2011)
What is Street Photography?
Here is the question that has always been debated...what is Street Photography? And what is not Street Photography? Well, we could start with:
“Street Photography uses the raw approach of straight photography from which derives.” And already the problems begin...hey, do you know what is straight photography?
Straight Photography presented a way to approach photography, as opposed to the manipulations of the time: we are talking about 1920, the era of the Great Depression...Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans...”anything that can alter an image makes the shot less pure and therefore less true”...through this apology of purity, you know you acknowledge the DNA of what is the photographic genre we're talking about in this book.
That said: Street Photography has its history, motivations and aesthetics, crystallized in the early 60, as a sort of legacy of the great reporters, armed with Leica. A name above all? Yes, you are right...Henri Cartier Bresson.
HCB, as called on the Internet from those who know, becomes the worship of street photographers from all over the world, never tired to idolize him for showing the way to go.
The way to go...where? The definition of Street Photography. No definition that we can invent will totally clarify what this genre is...that said...
...Street Photography is not staged photography, a challenge of the photographer with himself, an attitude, a state of mind.
Cool, no?
I can continue...
...Street Photography is a reflection of every day life through the eye of a photographer able to document the ordinary capturing the decisive moment, or what others don't see.
Broadway St., Downtown, Los Angeles, California (2011)
To give a comprehensive definition of street photography is not easy. You might begin by saying that it is a photographic genre, more precisely a kind of documentary photography. Street photography is indeed a snapshot of urban life on the street observed in his everyday life and in all its aspects: the irony, tragedy, unpredictability, cruelty and even beauty.
The images of this photographic genre are the mirror of society, the people who compose it, captured during the life of every day somewhere keen eye for the nuances of the human comedy that is taking place in public spaces. Being a street photographer means being in tune with life, perceive the moods, smells, colors, live it with intensity and then try to represent it only after it has absorbed.
Is it clear how much is challenging this? It is not a thing you can learn in few days. And you must convert yourself in a metropolitan animal. Otherwise, better to continue to take pictures to birds and flowers...
Henri Cartier-Bresson, who with his images has contributed to the rise of street photography, said that through the lens to capture the decisive moments of life it is necessary to equate the mind, eye and heart. An attitude that, according to the words of the famous photographer, requires readiness, discipline, sensitivity and geometric sense.
“If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it's a street photograph” Bruce Gilden
Great statement, no? It is from one of the most misunderstood photographers of the world...misunderstood especially by his imitators who today want to follow in his footsteps metabolizing only a small portion of what this photographer is. Common fate to many masters…
If you search on the web for articles concerning the history of street photography you have the impression that they all start from the origins of the “genre”, ranging from straight photography to documentary photography and reportage.
Correct, but if i ask you to give me an exact date corresponding to the origin of this photographic type, what would you reply?
I believe that real street photography was born in the ‘60s, in the years when in an emblematic city such as New York City (universally recognized as the capital of the genre by Joel Meyerowitz) there happened to be an intense re- evaluation of reportage.
Madero Av., Mexico City, 2011
Lee Friedlander but especially Garry Winogrand focused on the unconditional capture of images of city life (famous is the portfolio entitled “New York” of 1963).
In perfect continuity between reportage and the new born street photography, Leica accustomed a fetish camera to capture scenes containing subjects that were unconsciously photographed, without giving any importance to the preparation of the scene or posing of the aforementioned subjects.
Winogrand and Friedlander took an huge quantity of photographs (in the order of several hundreds of thousands), gaining a trustful and economic support by the Guggenheim foundation; in terms of exhibitions, they were both frequent guests of Moma, in particular in 1967 – together with Diane Arbus – with the exhibition entitled “new documents”.
Street photography mixes with pop culture, and this is true to the present day where often pictures that obtain the greatest success are those that remind us of the mythical era, maybe even simply by a pair of sun glasses framed in white or by the face of an aged woman with fluffy hair (always rarer to come across nowadays).
And street photography, in my opinion, has the need to maintain a certain level of aesthetics, leaving the freedom of language to anyone who has the possibility to explore other moods and mental facades, even towards the most futuristic of beings.
But street photography will always inevitably take source from the pop culture, because the city and metropolis is pop, the ideal jungle (although not the only one) figuring as perfect location for snapshots by the street photographer.
In my opinion Street Photography is part of documentary photography, but with its own precise aesthetic and approach. Goals are different from photojournalism, to the point of completely detaching oneself from it and aiming at goals that are absolutely different. But the question is absolutely complex because the street photographer is a potential journalist.
Fashion District, Downtown, Los Angeles, California (2011)
Now we have, maybe, the ideas a little bit clearer, but I still hear the question: what is street photography for you?
So, what is not Street Photography?
•Street Photography is not photojournalism;
•Street Photography is not just “people passing by”;
•Street Photography is not just an image with strangers photographed candid;
To understand the motivations and aesthetics of this genre is fundamental if you want to know what looking for in the streets. Street Photography has a documental value. Although some don't agree with this statement, I believe that the history of the genre is the history of Photography. In the continuous birth of new photographers, we all know that the Street Photography will exist as long as there the Photography. Street Photographers generations have been, are and will be always committed to represent the most genuine aspects of life of the human being through the biggest stage: the public realm.
I think we all agree about the reproductive infidelity of the photographic medium. Photography, in fact, was born as imperfect medium and as such remains: unable to produce the objective reality, Photography is permeated with temporality, subjectivity and lavishes on similarities. A face reproduced is not the actual face but a record of a time that doesn't already exist, a moment saved from the effects of time, elusive and fleeting.
Street Photography can be related with poetry. Documenting the reality at the same time can rise to poetic speech as works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Manuel Alvarez Bravo or André Kertész testify. Every photograph is an instantaneous conversion in a memory's museum. And this is important because also the bad photographs taken in the street (the most) are a document of the human condition. Naturally time will do justice of the photos that will be distinguished by becoming the universal heritage.
Dorothea Lange and her "Madonna" of the Great Depression, the journey of Robert Frank, the discovery of the secret work of the nanny Vivian Maier... all of these are memorable expressions of an era, important documents of the human condition that today nobody denies for their historical value.
