The secret of the wonder called street photography

But what is the secret of the fascination that we received to see a street photograph? What makes it, at least in our eyes, something absolutely different and, allow me, superior to any other genre?

Let's look at this photo.

All that negative space in the middle makes photography played on subjects that occupy only a portion of the image, distant, and that distance has to do with a very specific choice. As a photographer I oblige you, the observer, to ask yourself about this decidedly strange, different, perhaps even anti-photographic choice of composition.

The wall forces us to think and the wall is the declaration of the distance, perhaps of the difference between the two subjects. An old lady and a young woman, one civilian, the other a soldier. They both look at a distance in two opposite directions. We realize then that that distance is not only physical.

And so far what I wanted to communicate. But what would be the secret of the wonder of street photography?

As a photographer, I work on a dimension of casual encounter, of people who are not posing for me. and I photograph them. Oh yes, but how do I photograph them? The secret is hidden in my deliberate choice

The choice to include two subjects that are not related with each other. In the moment in which I insert them together in the frame I am creating something that has no relevance to the real except on the physical plane. Here, then, that I declare with my photograph another dimension of reality. And I do it through a portion of space and time that I created through shooting. I create other content. Something that does not exist in reality while still existing.

This is the secret and the great power of the street photographer.