Outstanding set. Some very striking images there, whatever genre you want to assign to them. And, yes, I suspect even Russ would agree that those last two are real "Street."
Careful, Chris: street photography is going through a little crisis of identity, with distinctions being drawn between street as scene, and street as portrait shot in the street. If you look at much of the late Peter Lindbergh’s fashion editorial work, you discover that, unusually perhaps, he was one of those who was active long enough to get better and better at his craft; I put that down to getting out of the studio and onto the streets, where there is life, both beautiful and as ugly as it comes. I’d say he used the street as scene, even though some crops/close-ups (unless you see the files you never know for real) look like “portraits” in the sense of this chat. Another thing I noticed quite some time ago, is that he sometimes used a middle-aged woman, short, sturdy, plainly clad, as recurring, passing foil to various models; in particular do I recall a set with Linda Evangelists and, if memory serves, Christy Turlington. Faking street when already in the street?
There is a minefield to be cleansed in that genre; who is and who is not a street photographer? Was Arbus really street? Was Ernst Haas? Are any of the current people on youtube really street, or simply frauds pointing and shooting because they dare, and have already invested resources into the platform? Are St Daido and St Suzuki really street, when they admit to sometimes employing models? The latter chap got dropped by Fuji for being too fierce, but was given a book of his own by Steidl.
In the case if both Haas and Leiter I think that street isn’t how they should most accurately be classified; if anything, they were both visual artists capable of extracting colourful sense out of chaos. You could say that for Jay Meisel, too, who claims to have carried a Nikon even when just going to the grocery store, but I don’t recall anyone calling him a street photographer.
This would, imo, make an interesting essay for somebody with the background to know more about the subject than I do, to research and to write. Especially so, if that’s possible to do clinically, leaving personal opinion out of the matter.
