Considering Street Photography

Last week the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened a sweeping exhibit presenting the prodigious career of photographer Garry Winogrand. More than 300 prints are displayed, from the beginnings of his career in 1950’s New York up and until photographs made in Los Angeles months before his death. This is the first exhibit of Winogrand’s work in decades, and it’s a good one.

In viewing the exhibit I found myself equally overwhelmed and inspired, and struck by how Winogrand considered himself and his style. Though Winogrand is considered a “street photographer,” perhaps even the best, he despised the term:

“I hate the term. I think it’s a stupid term, “street photography.” I don’t think it tells you anything about a photographer or work. I have a book out called The Animals, so call me a zoo photographer? Doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Street photography” is used to generally describe the practice of shooting straight photography in public spaces. The intent in documenting life in this way is to sift through the trite, the banal, the mundane and depict the humorous, ironic, and contextually interesting aspects of society. The way we interact next to and near each other is often fascinating.

The term is broad-based. As Winogrand complains, it fails to describe the nuances of an individual’s work or the many approaches to its practice. It is an idea that inspires those who work in the genre, who then later evolve the practice to fit their own creative preferences and desires. There are in fact no formal codes governing the practice, though there are many differing convictions.

Over the years, in my own creative pursuit, I have read and considered much on what street photography is and isn’t. Most interesting to me is the inevitable debate of whether street photography must be conducted clandestinely, producing photographs founded upon a discovered and candid scene, or whether the subject and photographer can engage one another, producing a more intimate and connected photograph.

Winogrand worked almost exclusively in the realm of the former. His fearless and indefatigable approach to photographing strangers produced powerful results, some of the finest and most important photographs of the last century.

Another genius I’m fond for, Bruce Davidson, practiced heavily in the latter approach with equally powerful results.In 1980 Davidson began traveling all corners of New York via subway. With no destination in mind, Davidson explored every line of the system, photographing riders along the way. He describes an interaction with a subject:

“I was looking at the map when the doors opened and in came a fierce youth with a deeply gouged scar across his face.
He sat down across the aisle from me, gave me a hard look, and said in a low, penetrating voice, “Take my picture and I’m going to break your camera.” I quickly said, “I don’t take pictures without people’s permission, and I always send them prints.” I reached into my jacket pocket for my portfolio, walked over to him, and slowly leaved through the sample photographs while sitting on the edge of my seat. After looking, he paused for a moment, then turned to me and said, “Okay take my picture.”

Examining a copy of Davidson’s book, Subway, the viewer is presented with beautiful, intimate, stunning color portraits. Davidson’s work exceptionally catalogues the time and place and feeling of the era – when the New York Subway was a flash point for criminal activity and a dangerous place to be - day or night.

Considering Winogrand and Davidson’s respective approach, is one a “street photographer” and the other not? Is one relevant in a discussion of the genre and the other not?

In my mind, these contrasting and sometimes divisive approaches are both true to the genre. The greatness of Winogrand and Davidson’s work derives from the ability of each to evolve their inspiration into a vision and style individually true. Most important is the development of that individual truth and to undertake and experience street photography in a way that is somehow meaningful to the participant - the photographer.

The unformalized nature of the genre lends to endless creative interpretation by those driven to be out there, in public, documenting society, chasing the feeling of making the next photo. As Winogrand describes that feeling:

“I get totally out of myself – it is the closest I come to not existing. Which is the best.”

@bennie

www.benjaminheath.net