I think many street photographers fail today with a thing: they are not familiar with the snapshot aesthetic. Yet it is the basis of photography that we love. Follow me in this reasoning…

In the beginning, it was a piece of engineering.

The year was 1924. A small camera was introduced to the world. Many of the old photographers looked at it like a toy designed for a lady’s handbag. And it was not. Because the fact was the camera was a keen precision instrument designed and manufactured by the ablest technicians of a respected and world-famous microscope company. The main innovation was the long strip of motion picture film, so you could take pictures in rapid succession. It was an extraordinary revolution which openly challenged the very concept of photography of the time, accustomed to using plates. And that camera was a Leica.

An entire world of amateurs, before the professionals of the image. welcomed that technological innovation with enthusiasm: modern photography was born through use in everyday life. Exactly in that time bad portraiture in family and silly snapshots became part of the photography practice. Photography entered the popular, no more exclusive of the academic and rich salons.

Since 1950 and particularly in the 60s and 70s, photography came into a popular medium. Some photographers start to reject the notion of high art and the separation of art from daily life was no more so evident. The “snapshot aesthetic” is born, with with an emphasis towards on vernacular, everyday, subjects typical of the amateur photography. The mundane and the open spaces, in a sort of visual diary was the new interest for many photographers, included those coming from the studio and the academic envinroment. It is in particular the case of the new born genre called street photography in the 60s. Photographers like Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander and then Joel Meyerowitz, Todd Papageorge, Bruce Gilden…but before all of them Robert Frank, even more than the the rigorous method and philophical approach of Henri Cartier-Bresson, imposed a way of photographing during the journey and in front of what you found in front of your eyes.

Today we can say that the snapshot aesthetic influenced so much the world of photography that we can see it proposed in any angle of the world: there is a snapshot aesthetic proposed by Japanese photographers like Daido Moriyama and you can see it even in fashion photography.

There is a fundamental article that I loved particularly talking how the Raw & Gritty Photography Is Taking Center Stage.

I declare myself absolutely devoted to this approach to photography that I pursue not only as a street photographer but also as a portrait photographer.

It is about indulging the more playful part of our photography. Not to be slow and pretentious to take a picture. A method and a different concept that allows me not to make the act of creating images a boring job. This is the reason why despite since more than 10 years as a professional photographer I never lost the enthusiasm and I still enjoy everyday the act of photographing.

My clients know it too and that's why they choose me. When I accept awork I do it taking into account the requests of the company or private person who contracts me, but I don't know exactly how the assignment will turn out. Because a big part of what I'm going to do is based on instinct and the flow of the moment.

Usually people are the subjects I photograph. And so I can't predict what their and my feeling and state of mind will be like when we find ourselves working together. Everything must happen in a natural and spontaneous way, far from certain impositions and fixed rules.

In the apparently banal the approach of the snapshot aesthetic is sublimated.

Lisette Model stated: I am a passionate lover of the snapshot, because of all photographic images it comes closest to truth […] The snapshooter’s […] pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style. The picture isn’t straight. It isn’t done well. It isn’t composed. It isn’t thought out. And out of this imbalance, and out of this not knowing, and out of this real innocence toward the medium comes an enormous vitality and expression of life.

Nan Goldin showed us raw images taker directly from her 1st person life. sometimes her photos are blurry but it doesn’t matter. Maybe exactly the out of focus can be an evidence of the research. I photograph because I live. And therefore it is the photograph that becomes a document of reality, of lived life, of the moments that flow through my frames. My snapshots.

In this context we understand how photography becomes an essential, constant, changing presence of my days.

My life path unfolds in the imperfect shot.

Carrying the camera always with me and using it almost obsessively allows me to understand the world. Without it I really could not, at least not to the extent that guarantees me to immortalize certain sce, even the most apparently forgettable ones.

I have cited several authors in this article, I could name others that I recognize as adepts of the snapshot aesthetics: Stephen Shore, Richard Kern, Joel Sternfeld, Guido Guidi…

I think this article could only end with this scene from the Pecker movie. The snapshot approach has always moved the threads of my photography. And now you know why.

Street Photography and Snapshot Aesthetic

Portfolio on this website

On getting close when it comes to Street Photography