What is Street Photography?

Evangelo Costadimas - Hong Kong, May 1, 2012

Although there has been a huge surge recently in the interest of Street Photography, the majority of its self-declared practitioners appear to suffer from a severe lack of knowledge about this tradition and their work has very little to do with the genre.

Most shooters today are amateurs and have little or no respect for the genre and have even less understanding of the legacy left to us by the masters. To them, we have a message:

JUST BECAUSE YOU SHOT IT IN THE STREET IT DOESN’T MAKE IT “STREET PHOTOGRAPHY”

‘Street Photography’ is not Urban Landscape, it is not Environmental Portraiture (nor 'street portraits’), it is not Humanist, Social Documentary and it is most definitely not Still Life. All of these are well defined genres with long traditions. ‘Street Photography’ has a distinct intent, the intent of not bluring the lines between itself and the aforementioned genres, but the intent of self expression capturing a fleeting image which brings meaning to it because it is only there for a split second. The timing of capturing these moments is crucial and has been coined the 'decisive moment’ by one of the forefathers of Street Photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson. As he stated, taking the same image a couple of seconds too soon or a a couple of seconds too late, renders that same image devoid of meaning.

Street Photography is about people, it is candid and it is about that ‘moment’. For this reason, it is probably one of the hardest types of photography to do, despite its easy accessibility (i.e. the street).

When we say candid, we mean the subjects are not aware of being photographed right at the instant the shutter is tripped. They may well become aware of it a split second later, for example if camera flash was used, but at the moment of capture, they were still in their natural state, unaware that they were being photographed. Street Photographs must therefore always contain people. 

But Street Photography is a lot more than just candid. Street Photography is an instinctual reactive response to the unpredictability of every day life as observed in public places. It captures human moments, poignant moments. It creates juxtapositions from unrelated elements or creates relationships between people who do not know each other, simply by using the camera’s framing and position.

As such, Street Photography is completely subjective, its intent is not journalistic or documentary and it does not need to represent the ‘truth’ in any way shape or form. To the contrary, the photographer lines up the elements in the shot so as to suggest a narrative or, better yet, to create an enigmatic or sometimes humorous situation. Street Photography has more in common with painting, jazz improvisation and poetry than it does with journalism or documentary photography. This is because the author of the image is expressing their personal artistic vision while he/she remains completely disinterested in the subjects themselves. Rather, the photographer is interested in what the subject or subjects are about to do or where they stand in relation to each other and the background. Street Photographs are often described as 'quirky’. There is nothing quirky about photographing a random person walking down the street, anyone can capture such images. What makes it special, what makes it Street Photography is composition and perfect timing that gives some meaning to the viewer of the photograph.

As a fellow street photographer noted, the terms 'street photography’ and 'decisive moment’ are probably the two most misused terms to be found on the internet today.