Why street photography is facing a moment of truth
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 3:26 pm
MY take and i agree with this article;
its harder and harder to pursue my art and even though many think it is not, i do.
its harder and harder to pursue my art and even though many think it is not, i do.
What is Street photography?t took root in New York in the 60s and 70s with compelling images of street life that captured the heart of the city. But anxieties about privacy, terrorism, and paedophilia have conspired to make the art of street photography ever more difficult. Sean O'Hagan recalls the movement's heyday and charts today's pioneers
......"When I'm photographing, I see life," he once said. "That's what I deal with. I don't have pictures in my head… I don't worry about how the picture is going to look. I let that take care of itself… It's not about making a nice picture. That anyone can do."
.....It would be even more difficult to take street photographs the way the more gentle practitioners of the form did. Both Britain's Roger Mayne, working in the 1950s and 1960s, and America's Helen Levitt, who famously began shooting in colour in New York in the early 60s, often photographed children at play in the streets and never thought twice about it. Neither did the children's parents or guardians. That is not the case any more. We live in an age of anxieties, both big and small, real and imagined.
Today, photography – and street photography in particular – is a contested sphere in which all our collective anxieties converge: terrorism, paedophilia, intrusion, surveillance. We insist on the right to privacy and, simultaneously, snap anything and everyone we see and everything we do – in public and in private – on mobile phones and digital cameras.
....Back in 2008, Home Office minister Tony McNulty, responding to a query from a photographer, wrote: "There is no legal restriction on photography in public places, and there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in a public place.
...To be a street photographer today, you need, as Martin Parr recently put it, "obsession, dedication and balls"
for Vlad the bold part::.."It's essentially a way of working wherein you have to be utterly open to what happens on the street," says McLaren, "So, no props, no models, and you always use available light. Then, it's down to a mixture of happenstance, luck and skill."
i am sure many will agree to disagree on this subject"I'd agree with all that but I'd also add that there should be no post-production like Photoshop or whatever and, just as importantly, no pre-production. In fact, I never make any form of communication with anyone I am photographing before I take a picture. You are looking in at something without being a part of it. That's very important.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign ... are_btn_fb...So, I try to be very clear about what I am doing, to myself, and the people I am photographing. I kind of mingle with the camera, I don't sneak around shooting without trying to be seen. I tell them what I am doing and that it might appear in a magazine or a book or whatever and people tend to be OK with that on the whole. It's a gamble but it usually pays off."