Week 7: Street photography

Image of the week

Image by yours truly (Vivian)

I took this picture on my phone when i was in Hong Kong during June. I chose this image because i want to talk about street photography/architecture. I'm not so sure which genre to concentrate on so i guess maybe i'll discuss images like this since it's a little bit of both. Firstly, as much as nature has it's own beauty, i have always been interested in looking at visuals of street photography. Those coincidental shots and happenstance are my kind of thing. I like snapshots and portraits on the streets because they give me a very free, wild and spontaneous vibe.

1839

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, View of Boulevard du Temple, 1839 (ca) Daguerreotype

Daguerre's exposure time was so long (likely between 10 and 20 minutes) he could not capture the moving figures and traffic on this bustling Paris street. Only a man who remained still while a bootblack polished his shoes was recorded, making this anonymous individual the first person to be photographed.

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1841

Johann and Joseph Natterer, Birthday celebrations for Josef II, 13.03.1841 Daguerreotype Albertina

Very raw and rough daguerrotype in the 1840s, but nonetheless interesting street photography in the past.

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1928

Umbo, [Mystery of the Street], 1928 Gelatin silver print , 29 x 23.5 cm (11 7/16 x 9 1/4 in)

Umbo played with shadows on the street with the figures, it captivates me so much.

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1937

Weegee, Summer, Lower East Side, New York City, 1937 Gelatin silver print

This image is captured at such a timely timing. Not just at tragic accident scenes, Weegee encounters happy situation like this as well.

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1976

Joel Meyerowitz, West 46th St., New York City, 1976 Dye transfer print 20 x 24

Colours came along and street photography takes on a more vibrant outlook in this image in the 70s.

Shooting Kodachrome colour slides was limiting because of the means of showing them and the difficulty of getting a high quality print. As Meyerowitz said in a 2012 interview:

So I was showing slides all of the time and I realized that slides were somewhat intangible. You blow them up on the wall, people sat back and said, “Oh, that’s nice,” but nobody got up to look at it closely. Really, when you have black and white pictures in your hands, you could flip through them and they were more intimate. So I began to shoot black and white, but I had this feeling that color really had more to say. If photography is about describing things, then color describes more things, so I felt that was it.

His style of street photography was, and continues to be, the "decisive moment" of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand both of whom influenced his work.

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2010

WassinkLundgren, Tokyo Tokyo - Tsukiji No. 18, 2010

Pigment print

Wassink and Ruben Lundgren work together using photography as a form of conceptual documentation. They met at the Utrecht School of Arts, and together they create images—which they present as books, magazines, or installations—that investigate everyday life and the ways people interact with nature in urban environments, often to humorous effect. On the streets of Tokyo, they photographed strangers, shooting simultaneous images from different angles. Other projects capture mundane images of things like laundromats, cars, and billboards, which they then insert amongst the romantic portraits painted by tourist guidebooks, or create by using a mirror to capture the environment outside public photobooths in convenience stores and post offices. The duo has been recognized by photographer Martin Parr, who selected their work for his “New Typographies” exhibition at the New York Photo Festival in 2008.

Image source: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/wassinklundgren-tokyo-tokyo-tsukiji-no-18