ThornleyGroves
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........rather than saying what, in my opinion, is real street photography, it is much easier to say what I think is not.
- Street photography is not pictures of poor people or people in distress that focuses on their condition and therefore borrows some emotion without bringing any new meaning. (what I call homeless porn). This is the most obvious, cheap and repellent cliché in street photography and viewers should not be fooled by the photographer's tales of giving money or food in return. Unless there is more to it than a picture of poverty, it is exploitative.
- Street photography is not taking an otherwise meaningless shot, converting it to B&W and tarting it up with heavy textures and vignetting and grain. Because of the long history of pushing films to get higher iso and using not-so-terrific lenses on early small cameras, the genre is historically associated with B&W and texture. Modern photographers convert to B&W to keep bright colors from diverting the viewer from the center of interest that they want to show. Unfortunately that means that photographers can take relatively meaning-free images and pass them off as something important just by hanging the street photos characteristics on them.
- Street photography is not any random B&W photography done outside. It may be 'slice of life' or just a well done but purposeless picture. If the picture has no point, it doesn't fit. Modern cameras do 98% of the work as it is, doing the exposure, doing the focus and not even costing anything to make exposures.
- Street photography is not taking pictures of graffiti or signs or things meant to be seen with no additional meaning or emphasis added by the photographer. The photographer must add something more than a passing Google van.
- Street photography is not jumping up in front of people and shooting their startled response. This 'method' seems to be the most admired by those people who haven't the nerve to go out and even shoot pictures of people at all. I find it, if not repellent and annoying, certainly irritating. The only positive aspect to this technique is that eventually people who shoot this way will annoy someone equally as aggressive and very annoyed and be will punched very hard in their nose.
While I think street photography can deliver very powerful messages, but these images appear to taken solely because of their appearance, and not with the intent of showing the real person or delivering a message on the state of poverty they're experiencing. IMO these are what street photography should NOT be.
ffarl,
you have missed the point entirely.
it's not that these don't fit into a category It is that these pictures are nothing but cheap tricks to engage our emotions without telling us anything we don't know.
And it is at the expense of objectifying these subjects, not as human being with severe problems, but as objects for us to look at. It is no different than taking pictures of the retarded or the monstrously obese, the modern versions of a carnival freak show.
It is repellent.