Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Who is or are your favorite "Street Photographer(s)"?

And why?

As one who has caught flack for stating, as articulately as I could, (and which was evidently of inadequate articulatude....?) my personally held attitudes and opinions about "Traditional Street Photography" I hope others will be as candid in stating theirs. Please do so with the explicit understanding that what you state will not be misconstrued as an attempt to lay out "rules" for the genre.

Images made by some of the better-known early contributors to the development and, by example, subjective definers of the concept of what is now called "Traditional Street Photography" are posted among the "Stickys" at the top of the threads of this Section, and have elicited a gratifying number of visits!

There are many other street photographers who have continued and are continuing to characterize the genre of "Street Photography". Portfolios of some of these other, more recently active Street photographers will also be similarly posted as the spirit moves and time permits,

Sometime in the future the works of such more modern modern street photographers as Chuck Jines, Valerie Jardin, Tatsuo Suzuki, Thomas Leuthard, Graham Smith, Alex Webb, and Rohit Vohra will be seen as contributory to what will have, at that time, come to be considered "Traditional Street Photography". Such is the nature of "traditions"; they are, like language, living, evolving phenomena.

From my personal perspectives from my collections of the portfolios of the more modern street photographers is that they contain a somewhat to much higher proportion of "street portraits" than do those of the earlier exemplars of "Street". In your opinion, is this a positive or negative trend in the evolving nature of "Street"?

I also think that the more contemporary street photographer display a trend toward more intensive post-exposure processing. Am I right? Is that positive? Negative?

What other trends do you observe?

just as important (IMO) are what consistencies among the images of the earlier and of the more contemporary street photographers do you observe?

I suspect (well, I hope that...) the attitudes of those who post in and follow the postings in this section are of those with a more serious interest in the genre of "Street photography", be it "Traditional" as viewed today, or "Traditional" as it will come to be viewed at some future time in its natural evolution.

Your thoughts and considered opinions are of interest!

Dave Graham

Graham Smith Loc: Cambridgeshire UK

I find it difficult to pick any favourites amongst the reconised street photographers as they have nearly all produced images that resonate with me, just as they all have images that do nothing for me. Obviously HCB and Doisneau have to be up there, another whose work I'm particularly drawn to is Don McCullin, not least because he is British and I am familiar with many of the places he photographed.
I also admire the snapshots of Vivian Maier, I used the word snapshot because I don't believe that she was consiously a street photographer, she merely photographed what caught her eye. Maybe that is the definition of a "real" street photographer? The naievity of Maier's pictures is what really holds my attention.
Elliott Erwitt, although again, not strictly a true street photographer gives me much inspiration, mainly due to the humour contained in many of his pictures.
I do take some street portraits, they can work with pictures that contain more street context to form a story. The portraits do need to be spontainious in my view.

I think the post processing is up to the concience of the photographer but in my opinion the results must be a realistic portrayal of the scene.
Trends?, I think they come and go in a cycle.

Consistencies? An attempt to capture life in a way that will engage the viewer and cause them to consder my deeply what is around them.

Graham S.

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

I am just an ocassional street photographer and basically just shoot what I see around me.

As far as favourite photographers go I am basically with Graham on this. I do not intensly follow current street photgraphers work

Re post processing - that is an 'artistic decision"
If it looks way over processed it doen't appeal to me.
Most of the time For my slef it is just a crop, levels and possiblty a bit of colour adjustment and ocassionally a B&W conversion. Once in a blue moon I will do an "arty" image.

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

Vivian Maier is my favorite... Maybe partly because she worked in Chicago.

http://www.vivianmaier.com

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Dave, I'd like to suggest a portfolio of excerpts from W. Eugene Smith's works. Smith (1918-1979) was often characterized as a photojournalist because LIFE magazine published so many of his photo essays, but that trivializes his revolutionary achievements. His "Spanish Village" (1950), "Nurse-Midwife" (1951), "Pittsburgh" (1955), and "Minimata" essays aroused worldwide interest. He was able to shoot the traditional "street scene" (one or two frames) but his preference was to immerse himself in the subject, producing thousands of negatives from which he painstakingly selected several hundred master prints, each of which he personally printed -- with breathtaking craftsmanship. He worked almost exclusively in black & white, ignored deadlines, and died with $15.00 in his pockets, even though he was offered tens of thousands of dollars for the rights to print his "Pittsburgh" essay alone in magazines (which would not agree to respect his instructions for the layouts). He was friends with Henri Cartier-Bresson and other colleagues at Magnum. and shared a Manhattan loft with many of the jazz musicians who hung out with him betwee 1958 and 1968. I had the honor to meet him at LIFE at a party in 1951.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Thank you, Richard. You mention one of my absolute favorites and I am, at present, winnowing down my collection of Smith's images for a "sticky" portfolio that, IMO, reveal his incomparable sense of the essentials of the nature of man. As for the technicalities of photography, he is quoted as having said that he worked exclusively with available light...".sunlight, flash, reflected light, window light, incandescent light....any G--D-----, f------ light you have available is what you should be glad to use".
Best regards, Dave

RichardQ Loc: Colorado

Dave, the man who most American photographers thought of when they heard "street photographer" during the late 1930s to 1940s was Arthur "Weegee" Fellig, whose day-to-day work was usually published in tabloids like the N.Y. Daily News and the U.K. Guardian. But his work also hangs in numerous museums. He was a free-lancer, cruising New York in a beat-up roadster that had a mobile darkroom in its trunk. He recorded far more than just traffic accidents, mob hits, and pretty girls. If you are unfamiliar with his work, I strongly recommend you look him up. He emigrated from the Ukraine with his parents at age 11 and was a professional photographer at age 15. His favorite camera was a 4X5 Speed Graphic, usinf sheet-film holders so he would be able to immediately process his two or four negatives in his car and rush them to his newspaper when time was of the essence. He also did a lot of experimental work with lenses for special effects,

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

As a native New Yorker in whose household the "Trib"' Sun" "News" and "Times" we're the daily sources of local, national, and international news and would-be-news (my parents were both grads of Columbia's School of Journalism) from the mid 40s to the late 50s, Weegee'swork was well known...as it was to practically everyone in the greater New York metropolitan area ( which included North Jersey and Southern New England) but given his documented reputation for having altered many scenes to his own liking, I have not included it as exemplary of "street" photography.

Dave