Street photography has undergone a revolution

Some say that the first camera image ever to show a human being was a street photograph. Louis Daguerre was shooting a cityscape in Paris at the end of 1838 or the beginning of 1839. The tree-lined Boulevard du Temple follows the path of a demolished medieval city wall, now separating the 3rd and 11th arrondissements, and Daguerre needed many minutes of exposure to get the picture. So the urban hubbub on the street mostly disappeared from the final image, which recorded only immovable objects such as buildings and trees. The prime exception was an unidentified man, down in the lower left quadrant of the frame, himself immobile because he was getting his shoes shined at a street-side stand.

Street photography has undergone countess permutations since the camera's mid-19th century invention. Capturing people in public situations with the utmost candor is street photography's general goal, and the genre claims many of the finest, most revealing works in photographic history. Some from the 1960s — including Lee Friedlander's socially charged photograph of racial divisions in Jim Crow-era Texas, shown here — are on view in "Streetwise," an exhibition at San Diego's Museum of Photographic Arts.

Since everyone with a cellphone tucked in pocket or purse today seems ready to start snapping away on its built-in digital camera, one might say we are all street photographers now. Even though issues of meaning and quality will always remain for individual images, that ubiquity means street photography as a distinctive formal genre is pretty much over.

The first big crack in its long tradition, however, can be traced to Los Angeles nearly 50 years ago — around the time Friedlander was photographing in Texas — and for a reason unique to life in postwar Southern California. I'll have a look at what happened in Sunday's Arts & Books section, which you can read by clicking here.

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— Christopher Knight

@twitter.com/KnightLAT

Photo: Lee Friedlander, "Texas," 1965, silver gelatin; Credit: Museum of Photographic Arts.

 

Comments

[Mark]

To Mr. Knight,

Street photography is not over. www.photo.net has a category of street photography which people post their works in.

Not everyone with a cellphone camera is a photographer. It is the "intent to comunicate" which determines that. Is everyone who sends a text message a writer?

[Christopher Knight]

To Mark: I agree with you.

As the story says, "The genre certainly hasn't disappeared. Look at Flickr, Yahoo's Internet photo site. There's even an ongoing project called 'Street Photography Now,' named after a survey book by former Tate Modern curator Sophie Howarth and photographer Stephen McLaren.

But neither does it stand on the rarefied pedestal once reserved for it. 'We're all street photographers now,' Howarth and McLaren write, acknowledging the ubiquity of digital cellphone cameras."

[Mike]

This article is another one of those "I preferred it when it was less popular" pieces. Where is this pedestal of which you speak? I want to visit it, since for as long I have been practicing "street photography" (40+ years) it has been largely ignored, misunderstood, and even hated.

[east hollywood]

re: "street photography as a distinctive formal genre is pretty much over"

Agree with Mark. It's not over, just as Twitter has not rendered us illiterate and unable to craft compound or complete sentences.

And, you have to mention Richard Leacock when talking about the tradition and roots of.

[MateuszG]

Following your thought: since everybody has a pencil one might say that we are all writers.

[Mumbai Paused]

We are keeping it alive and clicking.

[Jack]

Mike, Matt and Hollywood,

Christopher is not implying that the mere snapping of a picture makes one an avant garde street photographer but the barrier to entry to street photography has been removed so anyone and everyone can snap pictures and be considered a "street photographer".

[east hollywood]

An iPhone is more expensive than a basic digital camera. There was never a barrier to entry. Now more people have cameras because they are built into the phone. Without the phone, would they carry a camera separately for the purpose of questioning and exploring the world around them?

[Nick]

Absolutely hilarious article! Could the author be more out of touch with what is going on? at a time when street photography is being published, exhibited and made the theme of international photography festivals, he suggests that its over as a genre.

Is good journalism over? might be a more pertinent question here.

[Steve Johnson]

"Even though issues of meaning and quality will always remain for individual images, that ubiquity means street photography as a distinctive formal genre is pretty much over."

Could not disagree more. I do not do street photography but I follow the work of others and am seeing some of the best work that I've seen since Winograd.

Also some of those that are contributing to the 'ubiquity' will in time become great themselves.