Thank you, Bill, I got into appreciating this sort of thing many years ago through, again, American photography magazines. At the time, the UK ones such as Amateur Photographer were obsessed with snaps of fishermen complete with the obligatory pipe (for smoking) and heavy-ribbed, clean sweater; sometimes, you actually saw a little piece of net... Things picked up when I discovered Photography, a very different publication edited by Norman Hall. Within, I found the whole Parisian ethos with its incoming eastern-European migrants from persecution, the work of the new wave Italians and so on. Eye-opening stuff! It was that same magazine that saw my first published picture - a Polish model's portrait which shared space alongside Peter Sellers' pix of Britt Ekland... heady stuff for one callow youth!
There's such a tease with this kind of material - I suppose with 'street', in the sense of people-pix, too, in that it can't happen outwith the right place. For example: there have been several well-published images of ladies (very elegantly dressed) trying to cross puddles/gutters, their high heels and nylons marking such beautiful, delicate counterpoint to the black, wet and filthy drain water. I love those moments of contrast; makes one feel so lucky to be human and have women to brighten the days. In the sticks, nobody dresses up; mostly, as with France, you see deserted villages. I can't count the number of French villages we drove through, looking for a café in which to buy a coffee - everything looked closed, but the streets are beautiful with well-maintained flowerpots! Makes a whole new dimension to The Deserted Village.
Frankly, it's one of the reasons I'd like to move from the tranquility and return to a big city. Too much tranquility and you fall asleep - one good reason for being with Lula!
Rob C