A small guide to Street Photography PT.2

A STREET PHOTOGRAPHY MANIFESTO

Fashion District, Downtown, Los Angeles, California (2011)

When I wrote a manifesto on Street Photography my intention wasn't to put stakes or be dogmatic. My idea: offering an first document to read for those who first runs into term "street photography”, taking into account those that are essentially the points shared by many street photographers around the world. It is a document which should be read with irony and with the knowledge of what we have said up to this point: Street Photography is essentially a freestyle approach to photography, a poetic approach to document life in the public realm, the documentation of the experience of the photographer “on the road”. So please take it as a list of thoughts of a street photographer and not as a table of laws. Please note: I reviewed and updated the manifesto for this guide:

• Street Photography is Central to Photography

• Street photography is a tradition nearly as old as photography itself, despite its crystallization as a photography genre happened in the 60s, in New York City

• Street Photography is more a method, an approach than a genre
  
  

• Keen eye, careful observation and an open mind ready to capture whatever appears are the essential characteristics of a Street Photographer
  
  

• Street Photography is not staged photography, taken in the public realm, not only streets, but all the public spaces: metro, commercial centers, parks, beaches, restaurants, etc.
  
  

• Street Photography is original and captivating from both aesthetic and semantic point of view.

• Street Photography is not about architecture, statues, monuments without any presence or reference to the human being
  
  

• Street Photography uses the raw approach of straight photography from which derives
  
  

• Street photography isn’t just about taking pictures of people on the streets

• Street Photography follows from Straight Photography, inheriting from that documentary photography part of its philosophy and approach

• Street Photography is not documentary photography, or at least not only focused on pure documentation of reality. With respect to photojournalism are different motivations and aesthetics. At the same time I consider it part of documentary photography

• Street Photography needs of the environment. Otherwise is just a portrait
  
  

• Street Photography may include or not include human subjects. When the humans are not included there must be something that tells a story, generally descriptive of the human condition

• Photographing animals is fine, but respecting the aesthetics of genre
  
  

• Street Photography is much more than a candid moment. The content must be strong

• Street Photography is not seeking the pretty picture

• Street Photography is a snapshot with a stunning moment
  
  

• Street Photography is not and doesn’t want to be objective

• Street Photography is completely subjective. In fact, Street Photography is focused on the experience of the photographer in the public realm

• Street Photography is not (only) focused on reality
  
  

• Street Photography offers a reading of reality, creating fiction through surreal elements, juxtapositions, contrasts
  
  

• For the Street Photographer is an attitude and approach. It is a completely different way of living photography and the world around him
  
  

• Street Photography is not a commercial art. It is primarily a pleasure and a challenge for the photographer who practice it

• Street Photography has more things in common with art than it does with journalism
  
  

• The camera used is not important. Cameras are only tools
  
  

• Street Photography is on random moments
  
  

• Street Photography can be color or black and white
  
  

• A heavy editing, selective color, HDR, cloning elements, extreme photo manipulation, stitching and combining of images is desktop publishing, not good for Street Photography
  
  

• Street Photography makes no distinctions of class, race, religious beliefs
  
  

• It is not ethical to photograph a person just because is poor. In fact, this is not Street Photography

• The Street Photographer respects the people
  
  

• Street Photography is not offensive, without discriminatory contents of any kind
  
  

• Candid portraits are only a theme, not a sub-genre
  
  

• Probably Street Photography is only Photography at its purest form
  
  

• Any attempt to define and limiting Street Photography is destined to fail

Although I am open to interpretations more or less wide on this genre, I think Street Photography has aesthetic characteristics recognized universally. As photographers and by extension artists we don’t like labels, and this sometimes causes reactions very passionate. And no one has married the Church of the Orthodoxy. But there are Street Photography motivations according to the audience: 

To find an unrepeatable image revealing a story, a meaning or simply another lecture of reality; 

To make evident the profound sense of people's situations everyday;

To explore the human condition through managing to capture the extraordinary in the ordinary; 

Madero Av, Mexico City (2012)

Naturally also these points are questionable and can be integrated with other motivations. But in the history of Street Photography these examples determine over a long period of time and in a powerful and foreseeable way, not only visual trends and different approaches to this genre, but adjacent interpretations, and in a certain way, the point of view of the spectator, the final consumer of the image. 

I sustain the social importance of Street Photography. It is another form to document our era. Through Street Photography, and thanks to the Internet we are knowing more about the world. No matter how the readings are photographic or not, if the image bears with it more real or unreal elements. The mere fact of having photographs, photographs that as I said always are documenting the human condition in any part of the world, deserves consideration. 

Madero Av, Mexico City (2011)

Through the ages Street Photography is evolved and is constantly renewed thanks to the strength of masters but also through new movements (today we are seeing the great wave of the greek scene) and styles so we have our icons and central figures like Henri Cartier Bresson and Helen Levitt, we know that there was a time for the crystallization of the genre in the 60's thanks to Meyerowitz, Friedlander, Winogrand. All of them, and others as well, whose merit our respect for the work produced but also for the great impact on the history of Photography. 

Today we live in the era of the collectives, of the images shared through an incredible range of social networks, and many street photographers deserve being recognized, they deserve monographs, exhibitions and increasing recognition in the field. It is strongly encouraging to perceive that if the masters have created first-class art, also many contemporary photographers are doing sublime works through an alternative approach to the documentary.  We have to support them and this is my commitment too, as a publisher and photo editor.

Zocalo Sq., Mexico City (2011)

Photography has changed because world has changed. There is not a unique model to make Art, Photography or in our specific case Street Photography. There is not just a way to make street photography. And there is not the ideal camera for Street Photography: film, digital, compact, DSLR, mirrorless, toy-cameras, pinhole, mobile... I believe that Photography is today more than ever a participatory art where the sharpness of perception is facilitating the considered minor artists to intensify the experience of the documentation of our way of life.