Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/28

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Subject: [Leica] How healthy is street photography?
From: afirkin at afirkin.com (afirkin at afirkin.com)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:22:54 -0400
References: <6a7544a61003281635s7425cf49o433dd56b93cb5b3e@mail.gmail.com> <419FBA25-669F-4342-9952-16ACAD1378B9@gmail.com>

SP is perhaps being overrun by iPhones etc. I see respected
"photographers" claiming the iPhone as the next big thing. Maybe that's
the case, but for me its likely to be a bit of a fad, much as polaroid
was. I could never really "come" at those "snapshot" walls of polaroids
some artists became fascinated by. For me the arty nature of the
spontanaety did not overcome the weakness in the genre and so it died.

You may be right about colour interfering. Now that we can "naturalize"
colour so well with digital, removing it is less compelling, but there
remains the fact that you look at clothing in colour and the person in
b/w.

Cheers

Alastair

> I sense that there are fewer fans of street photography, but I cannot say
> why. The Street Photography forum seemed to go from B&W film to color
> digital about 7-8 years ago (when digital became completely usable), and
> the division between street photography and other genres seems to have
> become fuzzy as a result. Lluis's photos seem to still be squarely in the
> genre of street photography. And I see less of this every day. Some of the
> street photography adherents on the LUG seem to have drifted away, and
> some have died. Steve LeHuray really lived and breathed street photography
> with a Leica M that made Garry Winogrand's M4 seem "minty" (ebay term) by
> comparison. Maybe the SPers are a dying breed. After last week's heated
> discussion of about 100 posts on SP, I hope nobody was scared off.
>
> I want to get back into Lluis mode soon.
>
> Jeffery
>
>
> On Mar 28, 2010, at 6:35 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:
>
>> Is street photography dying? I just returned from a major NY area photo
>> show
>> in a community rife with advertising, commercial and TV photographers.
>> There
>> were 60 exhibitors, many of them successful photo professionals. Only
>> one
>> offered what could be called a street photo. There were just three
>> pictures
>> of people, one in the street photo and the other two reasonably formal
>> portraits. The rest were carefully arranged landscapes, flowers, and
>> travel
>> scenes with studied attention to the rules of composition. There was
>> little
>> spontaneity and no apparent joy. It looked like the final exam in a
>> photo
>> school composition class. Everyone was trying to be an ARTIST. How
>> boring
>> compared to the LUG. Fortunately the wine and cheese were good.
>>
>> Larry Z
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>




In reply to: Message from lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin) ([Leica] How healthy is street photography?)
Message from jsmith342 at gmail.com (Jeffery Smith) ([Leica] How healthy is street photography?)