The big misunderstanding with Street Photography

Joel Meyerowitz, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander. Helen Levitt, Stephen Shore, Alex Webb. And then Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Lorca-diCorcia. Vivian Maier, Matt Stuart, Jill Freedman. Boogie, Mark Cohen and Fred Herzog. Robert Frank, Walker Evans and Fan Ho. Jason Eskenazi, Todd Papageorge, William Egglestone. Ricky Powell, Jamel Shabazz, Martha Cooper. All very different photographers, with their own vision and different aesthetic goals. But all connected in some way by the definition of street photographers.

For too long, street photography has been tied to a set of common rules, not even universally accepted.

Yet the names of the photographers cited as an example should be enough to dispel this belief. In Cheryl Dunn's documentary is also pretty cleear: photographers are shown who are united by shooting on the street, but each has their own identity and quite distinct approach.

In that same documentary, Joel Meyerowitz makes a distinction between photographers who go to a studio and those who go to the street. The latter are street photographers. That’s all.

So I think the time has come to say it:

If you photograph mostly on the street, you are a street photographer

Street photography cannot and must not be linked to a single aesthetic and approach. I would rather say that street photography is a question of attitude, a state of mind.

For example: if a street photographer talks to someone and takes a photograph during this dialogue, does he stop being a street photographer? And who gets to say it? I would rather say that it will be the way of living the street that makes him/her a street photographer. A street photographer is an urban animal, perfectly connected with the metropolis, able to respect the rules of the street. We are like parkours or skateboarders, but with cameras.

Clearly we can make distinctions within the same street photography, but rather referring to each photographer and not to the rules that each of us must follow. Why do I have to limit my creativity or marry some sort of table of laws when I'm on the street and only I know at that moment what should be done?

Now I already seem to hear what he says: so don't call it street photography. If it's not spontaneous, it's not a street photograph. Guys, most of my photographs on the street are candid. But that is not the point. In my opinion we need to get out of the idea of street photography as a photographic genre and rather limit it to definition rather than a more academic approach to photography.

Mattu Stuart states: shoot first, think after. I think is a good point to take in mind when it comes to street photography. And yet it can’t be a universal recipe. I think we the street photographers are somehow lone wolves. Just me and the camera. Just you and the camera.

Street Photography is about to be in the place

This is what is really important. A photographer that goes in some place of the city with the right attitude. And he is able to transfer that energy and the stench of the street into the image.