Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: petermfiore on September 14, 2014, 06:08:03 pm
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I have been noticing that much of the "street photography" on this site is relying heavily on signage. It can. It shouldn't. The best doesn't.
Peter
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Maybe it should be considered a different genre: Sign Photography.
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If the signage lends itself to the other street content, it's street in my book. A sign by itself is not. Maybe someone can post some examples.
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The definition of "street" is broad and it should be. Some object to posed candids being street whilst a recent UK magazine reckoned that it is possible to do street without any people in it. The books I have on street encompasses many types of images. Once you try to put rules in place then the whole idea becomes unnecessarily restrictive. Imo I think signs should best relate to a person in an unusual way to make the image "work". Ironically just after posting I noticed Russ's post and it relates to my way of thinking?
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=93435.0;topicseen
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One that might illustrate my thinking?
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I have been noticing that much of the "street photography" on this site is relying heavily on signage. It can. It shouldn't. The best doesn't.
Peter
Hi Peter,
It's pretty obvious I pissed you off with my "so what?" comment. Sorry about that. If you were familiar with the great street photographers you'd realize I was paraphrasing Walker Evens (q.v.). Evidently I pissed off Terry too, who, if his web is any indication, also seems unfamiliar with street photography.
And that leaves me with this question: what makes you think signage shouldn't be used in street photography, and why do you think the best street photography doesn't use it? From your web site I see you're a landscape painter. I don't see anything there that would indicate you have a background in street photography or that you've done any street photography or for that matter much photography.
What is "good" street photography? It's the kind of photography that, to rely on a cliché, enhances our understanding of the human condition. Street is by far the most difficult of all photographic genres. It gets confused with photojournalism, but the purpose of photojournalism is to explain. The purpose of street is to transmit a transcendental experience. You can see the difference by looking at Cartier-Bresson's wonderful, early street shots -- during his surrealist period -- and his later work in a book like The People of Moscow. In the book he was doing photojournalism and the book contains very few real street photographs.
I agree with Stamper that the definition of street should be broad. On the other hand, without some kind of limit a term like "street photography" becomes meaningless. A picture of a street is not "street photography." I also agree with Stamper's "recent magazine" that it's possible to have street without any people in it, though just off hand I can't think of a good example.
Which gets me back to the use of signs in street photography. To me it depends on whether or not the signs show an interaction with or a relationship to the people in the photographs. If what the picture shows is a funny sign, and that's all it shows, even though there are people in the picture, it's not good street. Which means that Stamper's picture above, even though I like it a lot, fails the test. I suspect he knows that, because he's a very good street photographer.
Rather than go further into my ideas on the vagaries of street photography I'll point you to two articles I wrote on the subject: http://www.russ-lewis.com/essays/OnStreetPhotography.html, and http://www.russ-lewis.com/essays/WhyDoStreetPhotography.html. I submitted the first one to Photo Technique, which was on its uppers at the time and didn't accept it. At that point I gave up and published both essays on the web. As a result they've had a lot more readers than they'd have had in a magazine. According to my web analyzer the second one is the more popular of the two.
I've been doing street since 1953, when I was flying fighter-bombers out of Taegu, Korea. The war ended and I got very interested in shooting pictures of the people on the streets of Taegu. I still love looking at street photographs and shooting them.
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RSL,
Your comment "so what" is just that!
Once an image is dependent on the written word it is no longer
Universal. The written word frozen in a photo has it's limitations. Great street as in your beloved ,and mine ,HBC rarely needed words
To make his concept. His work is timeless as well as universal. His people in a context of their situation is what makes his pictures profound.
Peter
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Your comment "so what" is just that!
Obviously "so what" definitely is "so what." Haven't a clue what you mean by that.
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It started with this...
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3nq1o99eR1qah2gqo1_500.jpg
People are always looking for cute juxtapositions. If it is on the street...shoot it.
Basically I only separate street into 2 categories. Street candids and street portraits. The later are posed.
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That's one of the places it started. Actually Andre Kertesz was a bit out in front.
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Obviously "so what" definitely is "so what." Haven't a clue what you mean by that.
Your comment "so what" is your opinion. Your opinion is also So What! With respect of course...
Peter
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Here are two street shots from this summer that feature words to an extent. The Great Lakes shot features a sign advocating keeping the water clean. It also says something about the unseen person throwing trash on the ground instead of using the solar compactor. The second is a panhandler with a cup -- hoping to soon avail himself of the menu?
The words are vital in the Great Lakes shot, not so much in the panhandler one. What do you think?
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Here is one with signage of a sort....Next
Peter
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Now you're talking, Peter. That one is very good street. It's telling a story but we don't really know what the story is. It's loaded with ambiguity. If it's yours, why can't I find it on your web?
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Here are two street shots from this summer that feature words to an extent. The Great Lakes shot features a sign advocating keeping the water clean. It also says something about the unseen person throwing trash on the ground instead of using the solar compactor. The second is a panhandler with a cup -- hoping to soon avail himself of the menu?
The words are vital in the Great Lakes shot, not so much in the panhandler one. What do you think?
Sorry, Lou, they're both reasonably good catches, but neither is very good street. There's a story there, but there's no ambiguity. The first one is just a picture of a sign with some stuff tossed on the sidewalk by some passing slob, of which there are far to many out there. The second one is, as you say, a hobo sitting with a cup. It's possible to jump to the "menu" sign and raise the question you raised, but it isn't easy. I should add that I tend to shy away from pictures of hoboes. They're just too easy.
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Hi Russ,
It is indeed mine. Captured this past monday on my way to class. My website promotes my life as a painter. My photos have always been for me. I have been making my living for the past 40 years as an artist. I have had a camera attached to my face since the age of eight.
Peter
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You beat me by four years. I built my first darkroom when I was 12.
Do you have more street shots like this one? If so, you really ought to start a second web site if you don't want to mix your photographs with your paintings. And I'd love to see more of them right here on LuLa. We have far too few people here even attempting street photography.
I still don't understand why you shot and posted the Vanderbilt Urn. Obviously you know more about photography than that shot would indicate.
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One more.
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Perfect example, Stamper!
The two guys in front interacting would be enough to make a good Street shot. We don't know what is going on between them (there's the "ambiguity"), and then the partial sign behind them just reinforces that ambiguity.
And even that's not all: The other three people to the right are just so perfectly posed as if to provide three mor interpretations of the sign.
I love it!
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It's another good one, Stamper. Keep it up. I might add to Eric's evaluation that the guy leaning against the corner of the building looks somewhat menacing, which gives the picture a bit of extra punch.
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I particularly like the size progression of the people from right to left -- and the progression of their attention from straight ahead, then to the right, leading to the Nike guy. The prominent logos also play their part nicely.
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It's another good one, Stamper. Keep it up. I might add to Eric's evaluation that the guy leaning against the corner of the building looks somewhat menacing, which gives the picture a bit of extra punch.
Right. And that brings to my mind yet another possible interpretation. Now I hear each of the five figures in the photo quoting the sign, and each with a different tone of voice and inflection. The big guy on the right is saying it seriously. The guy to the left is repeating it back, but as a question. The guy on the corner has a menacing tone of voice. The woman is reciting it almost as sleepwalking, like a mantra, over and over. And I leave it to the rest of you to read something into the smallest figure on the far right.
To my mind, a good Street photo invites you to make up a story to fit it, but there is never just one "right answer." The next day you might read it differently.
I'm very comfortable shooting the landscapes that Russ abhors, but I've never been able to find and capture a good Street shot. But I do admire the genre, and I envy those of you who do have the knack and instinct.
Eric
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For some reason I started thinking again about Peter's statement that the best street photography doesn't rely on signs (he said "signage," and we'll come back to that in a moment). In my mind I ran back over Kertesz, HCB, Willy Ronis, Walker Evens, Elliott Erwitt, Marc Riboud, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Winogrand and a couple others -- in other words, classics from when street was taking shape as a genre, and I couldn't come up with an example that would make Peter even a little bit wrong. If I get out all my books and spend some time I suspect I can find one or two cases where signs were used, but one or two cases wouldn't be enough to refute the charge.
Then I started thinking about what Peter was objecting to, and found that he made that clear with the statement: "Once an image is dependent on the written word it is no longer universal." That's right. Unless you're familiar with French a French sign in one of HCB's pictures wouldn't add much to the meaning of the picture. But what about signs that don't depend on words? I remembered one I shot a couple years ago that depends very much on a sign. Here it is. Peter's still right about the written word, but I don't think you can damn all signs as not contributing to street photography. I'm pretty sure I posted this picture once before, but since it illustrates my point I'll post it again. Now I need to go back and see if I can find some other mute signs that contribute to street photography. I think the best place to look will be Helen Levitt.
About "signage." It's a terrible word that started popping up in the late seventies. If you close your mouth, pinch your nose, and inhale, you'll get "sinage." But "signage" needs to be expectorated.
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She appeared to be....
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I like it.
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Another one.
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Love it! But if you were Russian you'd never know she's available on the basement floor.
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The definition of "street" is broad and it should be.
Photographer Osborne Yellott appears to have been the first person to deploy the term "street photography," as the title of an essay he wrote in 1900 … he then divided the genre into two strains of photographic meaning, delineating street photographs based on attention to the specifics of location from those rooted in the scene the photographer discovers there. For the first category, the "pictorial treatment of locality," he argued that "an intimate acquaintance with the locality is essential to success." For the second category, the "record of scene or incident which may possess sentiment or merely human interest," the specific location of a photograph bears little importance. … one in which urban context is key, the other stressing poetic or fortuitous happenstance.
… I will use the term "street photograph" to delineate Yellott's first category from the "street photography" of Yellott's second category, with which the genre has for too long been exclusively equated.
Unfamiliar Streets (http://books.google.com/books?id=dyk_AwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&dq=unfamiliar%20streets&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=%22Photographer%20Osborne%20Yellott%22&f=false): The Photographs of Richard Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia
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In the land of the Giants.
I shot this on Monday. once again on my way to class...
Peter
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An another
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Yes. This works for me.