Thanks Dave.
But at times I have to wonder, is colour street as street as monochrome street?
That one is instantly brought into play by looking at Slobodan's linked Russian photographer.
It used to be said that colour made war photography step from chaos and pain into art and beauty. (Well, something to that effect.) I tend to agree with the sentiment, and would add the thought that perhaps only black/white, with its unavoidable, automatic/mechanical move from "reality" into fantasy can really work
as street, because if you retain the colours, somehow, you, as viewer, can't quite throw the suspicion that the photograph is, really, just a snap of what is in front of the camera - whatever is happening there. If you show in black/white, it subliminally suggests a sense of
intent behind the photographers's finger, that he
saw something rare which it is now up to you to try to decipher as well, even if the picture really contains nothing beyond the obvious.
This is a phenomenon that I believe has only come to be since digital, for the simple reason that every shot now offers the possibilty of colour or not. Thus, the snapper is faced with choices he didn't have to face before, which meant that as he almost invariably used b/w film for news, the added layer of artistic intent wasn't strongly there. One could argue whether HC-B's name would have meant much today had he worked in colour all his life.
On the other hand, Leiter's name was made (apart from his fashion work reputation) by using colour to show not so much people, as city scenery and the signs/traces of people: traffic, barber's poles, windows, mirrors, lights and so on. Yes, he also did a lot of black/white work, but to me, that seems to be more a form of snapping away at his friends and immediate circle, even though a lot of the pictures would appear to show strangers within geometric shapes of city structures.
Perhaps one could make a case for claiming that HC-B, Klein represent a sort of street reality, whereas Leiter and Hass are exponents of street as photographic painting. Some of the other "names" associated with the street genre strike me as mere wannabe artists who, yes, carved great reputations, but gave precious little for it in return. I'm not sure where I'd put Robert Frank: he has this immense reputation for street and reportage, but in reality, he seems to have made that seminal book and then switched completely sideways into other projects with little to do with the same genre. I think he really had a greater interest in film, much as did Warhol - but with all that mind-bending stuff floating around, who could ever be certain, and probably least of all, those denizens of the Factory circle.
If there's a growing problem with Internet access, I think it is that it creates so much visibility of pictures that one is driven into being selective or going crazy: the choice is ours to make. With that choice comes the inevitability and hoped-for safety of the personal pigeonhole.
Rob