I have a deep an abiding love of street photography.
Of all the genres, I feel the most drawn to it and find practicing street photography to be a timeless pleasure. I can in fact admit to loving and practicing street photography before I knew there was such a thing. I used to call it National Geographic style, for lack of a better term.
The thing is, it is very hard to pin down what street photography actually is and I get frustrated by artificial labels being applied.
I bought two books on the Perth trip (because big, heavy books are such a practical idea when travelling), both loosely about street photography, but very different in approach and content.
“Reclaim The Street” grabbed my attention on the very first day because the front cover image was close to one of my own favourites from Japan. It shows a Salary Man in Shibuya leaning head first into a wall. A Salary man “taking a moment” is a common enough sight and very in context with place and story.
Similar vibe to this, just more focussed on the man and only the man and more desperate, less tranquil in a sea of motion.
The second book is about portraiture by Mary-Ellen Mark, a photographer I have long wanted a decent book about, relying up until now on a battered copy of Camera and Darkroom magazine.
In it, she states that to her, Street photography is the hardest form and very different to what she does, which brings to light the differing opinions on what it actually is.
To me, Street shooting is about people and life, simple as that. The choice of whether it is overt of covert is the photographers philosophical and technical choice.
Mark is an overt documentary portraitist, which to me is a form of street photography, but she sees it as a different dicipline.
Kate Kirkwood photographs rural landscapes with a human touch proving that the literal street is not needed.
Bresson snapped Parisians doing their French thing, but could equally have posited his images as a documentary work on Parisian life.
At the end of the day, it is all about people doing their thing.
Same, same, but different.
Street photo?
The image above is just a snap of a family, or is it?
I could title it, age it even and it may become a work of some importance, but it is still a family snap. Maybe if I went back in time, or forward even it would change in importance?
The elements of a Street photo are there, people, natural interactions, place, layers, but by being familiar or mundane is it shifting into a different space?
Sally Mann photographed her own children candidly, posed and documentary style, but if you stretch the definition, they fall under the huge umbrella of Street.
Maybe this one?
This image has more “gravitas”, is more clearly layered and theatrical. It has more of a feeling of “seizing the moment”, but is it any more or less a Street photo?
I guess if you personally need to define the catergory more formally, then it can be easy to do, but for me, the types of image making I like tend to blend together with no clear lines of embargo, meaning I either have to make up a fusion term, or stretch the definition of what a Street photo is.
Maybe the easy fix is to call it all “Life Photography” and move on.
There you go, fixed :).