A Critique on Street Photography

After years of practicing Street photography and following the development of the genre and its photographers, I’ve started to think more theoretically about the topic and what it means to me.

In the last seven years of photographing, I’ve went trough many different stages and lately I’ve become more aware of what I was doing and also more critical about it.

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As a street photographer you will usually have a higher awareness of your public surroundings than the average pedestrian. When you are holding your camera, ready to expose, you will experience intense momentary connections with people around you and your mind will process possible frames before the crucial moment is gone.

I would be lying if I claimed to be personally interested in most of the people I photograph in the public. My aim is to inconspicuously document moments and scenarios of the human condition to record and analyze it.

Street photographs include people like a play includes characters. It is the certain combination of elements, the short moment a street photographer decides to capture in a frame as a crop of reality, thus creating a new reality in a photograph. It is like using a flashlight in the dark. You only make things visible you point at and everything around vanishes.

Following Susan Sontag’s assessment, Street photography is a hunt for moments and your weapon is a camera. What we do is using human beings as characters in our chosen settings to entertain whoever looks at the pictures we take.

Street photography now might sound like a rude and unethical thing to do and I won’t solely disagree. Instead this should be a reminder of the responsibility a street photographer carries. Without awareness, sensitivity and self-critique a photographer risks defacing their subjects. While I try to avoid this, others consciously intend to do exactly that.

Street photographer Bruce Gilden uses a wide angle lens and a flash when taking close ups of strangers. His photos reflect a sense of distraction, uneasiness and even shock which reflect the way he approaches his subjects. Lately, this approach gained more and more popularity, due to Gilden appearing in several ‘Street’ documentaries about his work and I find this quite alarming.

Street photography tells stories about everyday life. When a photographer takes too much influence, he himself becomes the protagonist of his frame and captures the reaction to his appearance only.

So the question is: is there a right or wrong attempt at street photography?

A photographer’s work is a mirror to their view on the world. And that might be enough of an answer.