Street Photography for DCC by Sheena Rogers ARPS 9TH September 2024
A street photograph is one taken in a public place, candidly, to tell a story, or to reveal or comment on something about human life and human nature.
A street is not essential – a museum, a beach, or even a mountain top are also acceptable locations. A visible person is not essential. Evidence of human life and activity are also acceptable subjects. Posed subjects as in street portraits or environmental portraits are excluded from this competition.
Most street photographers claim that the photographer’s goal is to capture or freeze a moment in the endless and dynamic stream of life. Henri Cartier-Bresson for example wrote that the street photograph is intended to “preserve life in the act of living”. His famous Decisive Moment is "when form and content, vision and composition merge into a transcendent whole".
An essay by Michael Rubin reminds us that the decisive moment is essentially about composition - the magical moment when the dynamic and changing world aligns itself to present the perfect composition to our cameras https://petapixel.com/the-decisive-moment/ .
To achieve this you might identify a location, visualise an image, and wait for the right moment to press the shutter, Cartier-Bresson-style. Or you might notice a striking pattern of colour and light in the human environment and carefully frame that in your viewfinder, like Saul Leiter https://www.eyeem.com/blog/10-lessons-we-can-learn-from-street-photographer-saul-leiter .
While well-crafted compositions are a popular goal, they are not essential. Contemporary street photographer Daido Moriyama instead calls his images ‘snapshots’ and his aim is to quickly place his camera between himself and what he sees in order to capture the moment without his own intervention (without even looking through the viewfinder!). Instead of perfectly aligned compositions, he favours ‘Are, Bure, Bokeh’ or grainy, blurry, out of focus (usually very contrasty) images. https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/ultimate-guide-are-bure-boke. These images, he felt, were closer to ordinary human visual experience.
We encourage you to challenge yourself: spend time out in public places shooting candid photographs with your camera or your phone. Try framing and waiting for the perfect moment like Cartier-Bresson; capturing expressive and carefully framed moments in bright colours like Leiter; and walking and shooting from the hip towards subjects of interest like Moriyama.
