Yes, it does, Keith. And what you're telling me you do is what I do too, when I'm able to do street (which isn't often nowadays). I go to places where I'm likely to find things that interest me. But it's still what Cartier-Bresson pointed out: "It's luck that matters. You just have to be receptive. That's all."
Well there you go, I would not classify Keith's posted shots as street at all. I would describe them as travel atmospherics. Maybe I have a natural affinity (I didn't write ability) for observing the value of classification - a need even - because of my Tony Stone days (stock library), where everything had its genre, the hole it had to fit and satisfy.
Street, for me, takes on roughly three required dimensions: it has ambiguity most of the time; it is an observation of the quirkiness of humanity; it reveals a tension of one kind or another. It has nothing at all to do with beauty. It can also, I guess, be called street when it is an aggressive style of work as practised by some of the late American guys such as Winogrand and
perhaps that guy who sticks a flash gun in folk's faces. I think he's with Magnum, but I can't be bothered to seek him out because that isn't to me, true, classical street, it's shock caused by photographer and defeats the art of observation because it is the art of provocation.
Which leaves the confusion surrounding Saul Leiter. No way do I see any tensions or possible threats in his oeuvre; my favourite shots of his do, sometimes, have people but often so disguised (through misted up windows etc.) that those figures are but suggestions of humanity. His street work (simply because that's where it is shot) that consists of colours and blurs and things seen through windows are, to me, street art, which is not street in the other senses.
Sounds rather complex in the telling, but to me, crystal clear.
;-)
