With respect, Russ, I think that's unfair on those of us (me certainly included) who don't understand street photography. I don't take street not because I'm scared of what the subjects might do to me, but because the results don't interest me. I can appreciate the technique involved but I just don't see why it's done.
Perhaps it's a matter of motivation. I take photographs because I want to produce something beautiful that I can at least imagine hanging on a wall. I've not seen a street shot that would fit the bill.
I'm prepared to admit it's a failing on my part, along with my lack of appreciation of much modern art (there was a feature in the Sunday Times on Koons and Hirst: I can't begin to understand how they made so much money), most modern music (Berio? Stockhausen? Cage? Lutoslawski? Birtwhistle?) and no doubt much else.
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
I'm not Russ, who does wonderful 'street', but I do sometimes wish I had been blessed with the eye, the speed and the nerve.
As to why: I think it could depend on your age. For older guys who were at least
aware of what photography could be during the 50s or earlier, I think it's part of our culture: something with which we grew up, from looking at news magazines, mainly, as they were pretty much all there was as reference. Not photo-magazines (British), in the main, because my memory of them -
Photography, edited by Norman Hall, the exception - is one of 'fishermen' sitting in studios puffing on immaculate, shiny pipes (which, in reality and off-set, they probably didn't even smoke), and wearing the absolutely
obligatory heavily-ribbed sweater from Shetland or wherever. Tragic stuff; and all lit with the curse of Karsh.
As for today's exponents: my feeling is that, devoid of almost any actual possibility of doing photography as a means of regularly putting bread on the family table, disinterested in the vacuity (which I feel) most landscape represents, they have little else left to explore and from which to attempt to garner their jollies. Trouble is, it's now totally irrelevant. As is almost all of photography.
As to the production of something beautiful: I don't think that applies in 'street' which is esentially about message, mood and photographer speed rather than beauty. I always sought beauty too, but found it in women - where it existed, and I tried to manufacture it where it often did not (the Bilble has that covered too, with sows and silken purses). More than about beauty, it was where photography and self entered into something that was, at once, both an explicit, yet also implicit, very personal relationship, especially with a regular model. I remember remarking to my one muse long, too long ago, that we shared something ever denied her husband. She agreed. I attempted to take it no further; where it lay was beautiful enough, so why destroy that and all the surrounding, possible victims? Beauty? Satisfaction? Fulfilment? Whatever the motivation there is no doubt that photography can be the second most important thing in life after family. For others, the rôles can be reversed.
Rob
