An interesting question kept my mind occupied: what is the fundamental difference between the highest community rated image and the "streetart" shot?
Highest rated image:
Streetart:
I mean they both represent a similar kind of image with strong graphics in striking colors and a single individual, anonymised by size. The graphics and colors are the dominating elements which represent a typographical beauty. They are both spontaneous moments, slices of life in urban setting, captured outside the studio. Why then is it that for me (and apparently for the presenter as well) the first image does not represent street in the narrow sense of the word?
The difference is actually quite easy to demonstrate: if you imagine that first picture with a large white vase, or perhaps a white pilar instead of the person standing there, does it fundamentally change the image? For me personally, it would still be the same. In the second image however, if you remove the individual from that second image, you remove entire layers of meaning, which breaks it apart into a merely mildly interesting abstract no longer alluding to the african traditional theme that's brought together so effectively by that serendipitously appropriate individual.
In other words, in that first image, there is no interaction (neither literally, metaphorically, nor graphically) between the individual and his environment. It lacks binding of elements. You can replace the colors with different complementary colors, you can even replace the elements and it would still be a graphically striking image, but it doesn't communicate anything beyond the striking graphics, therefore it lacks a binding narrative.
Because it lacks a binding narrative, even just graphically, it no longer qualifies as street in the narrow sense of the definition.