[Leica] Street Photography: a meme invented on the internet

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Garry Winogrand called street photography a term I think he came up with as
"an attitude" and died with: "2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls
of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized
as far as contact sheets being made." as he was discovered by John
Szarkowski he could quit his day job and call anything anything he wanted. I
think "street photography" is his term.  I was never into his shtick so the
term didn't catch my year in the 60's and 70's. The term we used at my
school was photojournalism. Nobody ever said "street".
Phil,  photographers who use "cameras mostly in urban settings to capture
the feel and look of life on the urban streets." are photojournalists.
Documentarians. Threes no reason to come up with trendy meaningless terms
which mainly mean the same thing.

Try to find Robert Frank using the term "street". Possibly became its
deceptive, meaningless and trite. A huge influence on my a lot of my shots
were direct rip offs of his though I only saw it later.

" William Klein (born April 19, 1928) is an American-born French
photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach[1][2] to both media
and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of
photojournalism and fashion photography.[1]"
He was fashion photographer who went out with his camera and roamed the
streets after a job. Notice the terms wiki used to refer to him
" photojournalism and fashion " does not need to use the term "street" on
his page.  Except that he lived in Bleeker street.
Klein is called by writers and bloggers "among the fathers of street
photography" but try to find a quote with him talking about it. I can't.
The man was a professional not a crazy dilatant.

Lee Friedlander shot jazz musicians for record covers but then got a
Guggenheim so he could shoot what he wanted. He'd shot famous black and
white nude photographs of Madonna who got paid 25 bucks to model for him.
" Working primarily with Leica hand-held 35 mm cameras and black-and-white
film, Friedlander's style focused on the "social landscape". His photographs
used detached images of urban life, store-front reflections, structures
framed by fences, and posters and signs all combining to capture the look of
modern life."
In the wiki page on him this came from the term "street phototography" is
never used on the whole page in reference to him and certainly not by him.

John Brownlow was on the original Lug many years under  the Johnny Deadman
byline (the only one who got away with that) and is a writer in the film
industry is no slouch by far with stills. He was very fond of the term
"street"  and backed it up with great work yet he was getting into
photography at the turn of the  millennium when that's the term that was
bantered most about on the internet.






On 5/3/15 1:26 AM, "Phil Swango" <pswango at att.net> wrote:

> Mark, I'm surprised to hear you say you never heard the term until very
> recently.  I've heard it used for years to refer to the school of photogs
> like Winogrand, Frank, Klein, Friedlander, etc., who worked with 35mm
> cameras mostly in urban settings to capture the feel and look of life on
> the urban streets.  There's an excellent book on the history of the genre:
> "Bystander: A History of Street Photography," that's well worth a read.
> <
> http://www.amazon.com/Bystander-History-Street-Photography-Afterword/dp/082122
> 7262/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430629487&sr=1-3&keywords=bystander
>> 
> 
> The authors say that the term originated in the 19th century to describe
> photographers who set up their tripods on urban sidewalks and offered to
> take portraits of passersby for a fee and deliver the prints by mail.  It
> evolved through the years to refer to other genres of work shot in street
> settings.
> 
> There used to be an online group hosted by John Brownlow that focused on
> the genre but it is no longer up AFAIK.  I can't remember the name of the
> group, but others here once belonged.
> 
> I like the term myself and would happily use it to describe any work I've
> done in that setting.
> 
> Yay!  I'm a street photographer!
> 




-- 
Mark William Rabiner
Photographer
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/