So when I was looking up articles about Jill Freedman to share in my previous post I came across a really good article on PDN.com about What Street Photography means to several notable Photographers.
In the article Joel Meyerowitz nailed it when he said “You see tons of [imagery] on the internet labeled street photography, but when I look at it, it looks mostly like portraits of people on the street, usually in the center of the frame, and a lot of that work doesn’t seem to have much invention or intelligence or spirit or spontaneity.” I could not agree more with his statement. I see way too many images today that claim to be “Street Photography” which aren’t. I have seen images that would fit closer to the style of “New Topographics” profess to be street photography. I think with some of the self taught photographers out there the term “Street Photography” is romantic, or hip, so they call all their images street photography when most aren’t. I also think its somewhat humorous because Garry Winogrand, arguably the best “Street Photographer” to date, hated the term “Street Photographer / Photography”.
Martha Cooper & Alex Webb both had great insight for the PDN article too, please refer to the link above to see their comments.
For anyone wanting to learn about Street Photography look to some of the Masters.
Below are some Instagram examples which support my argument that many images “Street Photography” are not. Street Photography Magazine has some images which are Street Photography but there is a mix of others which are obviously not. Street Photography International has some dynamic images, but for me I would say most images there are not “Street Photography”. The images found on the page hash-tagged Street Photography are usually a quagmire of non-Street images.
Street Photography International