Once again, i think you should have said inside their homes otherwise every street photographer since Cartier-Bresson is a creep? I don't think they carried a bunch of releases in the backpack in those days and made everyone sign it, otherwise the photos would have been very different (and boring).
Most of the work by Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander can be considered intrusive, calling that "bloody pathetic" is just wrong.
I do believe that street photography does sort of require some degree of spying on people, big deal, google and facebook are giving the really private info to the government.
I don't think so at all.
People like HC-B had a mission; they were mainly working for 'socially concerned' magazines and the political points that they were making were in tune with the plight of their subjects. If anything, I'd imagine that HC-B et al. would have had a lot of co-operation from their subjects.
However, when similar - not the same - things began to be the province of Wino and pals, then no, there wasn't anything political or altruistic at play: it was an obsession with catching the oddballs, the same breed of people as Arbus found so captivating. I see it as manifestation of a deeper mental problem - why else, had there been real, legitimate purpose, would so many films have been left undeveloped... it was an illness, a compulsion to be there on the street, in the thick of others kinetic energies, an attempt to cling to an illusion of having a life of one's own by the simple expedient of intruding into the lives of those random others one didn't even know. A substitute for a contented personal reality, then.
If anything, rather than mild outrage, I feel a gentle sorrow for them.
“Most of the work by Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander can be considered intrusive, calling that "bloody pathetic" is just wrong.”
No; again, I was referring to the concept of
intrusion, not to the photographic results which can, obviously, be quite stunning on their own merits. Exactly as a beautifully applied stab to the heart, that neither damages nor breaks any ribs, can be considered a wondrous piece of surgery, but fatally murderous nonetheless.
Rob C