Welcome to the Vic Street Photographers Collective · Thu Oct 05, 02:15 PM by colin newell
*Days* *Hours* *Minutes* *Seconds* 00:02:05:50s
I am creating (with the help and enthusiasm of some very great local photographers…) an arts collective of serious street photographers.
What is a street photographer?
1989 – I captured this couple with a 1957 Rolleiflex 3.5F Planar medium format film camera – it used to be the camera of choice for some, but not all, street photographers. With its whisper quiet shutter and waist level viewing position one can get close into scenes without being too obvious.
Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places.
Although there is a difference between street and candid photography, it is usually subtle with most street photography being candid in nature and some candid photography being classifiable as street photography.
Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic.
The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes.
Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the shooter finds the world “picturesque”. Susan Sontag, 1977
But what does the 1 hour part mean?
We focus on our craft for an hour – collectively, individually or in a team.
Sure, it could be 5 minutes or 3 hours… 1 hours of focused work makes for a good exercise.
(We) The street photographer can be seen as an observer of the streets.
Framing and timing can be key aspects of the craft with the aim of some street photography being to create images at a decisive or poignant moment.
Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history.
This motivation entails having also to navigate or negotiate changing expectations and laws of privacy, security and property.
In this respect the street photographer is similar to social documentary photographers or photojournalists who also work in public places, but with the aim of capturing newsworthy events; any of these photographers’ images may capture people and property visible within or from public places.
Street photography does not need to exclusively feature people within the frame. It can also focus on traces left by humanity that say something about life. Photographers such as William Eggleston often produce street photography where there are no people in the frame, but their presence is suggested by the subject matter.
Much of what is regarded, stylistically and subjectively, as definitive street photography was made in the era spanning the end of the 19th century through to the late 1970s, a period which saw the emergence of portable cameras that enabled candid photography in public places.
Colin Newell is a Victoria area resident and food writer has been a film photographer since 1966 – Yes, a very, very young child.
