When I’m asked what type of photography I enjoy most and I respond with “street photography,” the next question is, quite frequently, “What’s street photography?”
And, when I attempt an answer, I invariably find myself stumbling around, trying to find a way to encapsulate and clarify the broad and complex genre of street photography. I usually end up with something like … it’s capturing candid moments of public life.
But that answer just raises more questions: Does it have to be taken on a street? Does it need to be candid? Isn’t everyone with an iPhone a street photographer? Do you need permission to take images of people in public? Isn’t it considered an invasion of privacy?
So, after a bit of research and reading about street photography, this is how I’m beginning to understand this broad and complex genre.
First, I’ll start with an article in Expert Photography, titled Street Photography Types, in which Graig Hull offers a typology of the genre of street photography.
I found it helpful because the author offers a broad range of categories - from the unobtrusive to intrusive styles of photographing people, from raw to fine art photos, from portraits to the geometric, from modern to abstract. And so on. While it is just one photographer’s attempt to categorize the complex genre, I find it extremely useful as I work on my own photography and try to better understand where it fits into the overall scheme of things.
Second, here’s an interesting article by Ibarionex Perello, a photographer, writer, and educator, and the host and producer of the podcast Candid Frames. In it, he makes a compelling argument for the term “public photography” rather than “street photography” - in order to avoid the “rigidity of current definitions of street photography which relegate it to nothing more than images of strangers walking down a sidewalk.”
What I found most enlightening and inspiring about Perello’s piece is his argument that the best public photography emerges from a well-tuned sensibility of public spaces, where the photographer anticipates and captures a scene with a unique perspective, whether of people or architecture, and the viewer recognizes the scene as something common yet unique at the same time. The scene is clearly recognizable, but the photographer captured it in such a way as to reveal something new or perhaps surprising.
It’s also about connections between unassociated elements in the scene, creating interesting compositions that go beyond simply documenting the moment.
With a compelling juxtaposition between unrelated elements, for instance, the image can elicit surprise, laughter, curiosity, empathy, and more, creating an unexpected and compelling narrative that moves beyond simply documenting a scene in our public life.
Stay tuned as I learn more about what I’m now calling “Public Photography” and working to capture those compelling juxtapositions in our shared pubic life.
~Sandy
