(1) Introduction

Westerbeck and Meyerowitz (R2) are calling street photography as:

'The spontaneous and arty motivated photography at public places which is influenced by issues which can be assigned since the beginning of photography'.

The difficult but profoundly interesting 'process' of street photography is to concentrate the emotional impression of very short-lived candid moments by the help of aesthetics, symbolism, contrast and composition.

It is also the 'surreal' aspect to catch harmonious, mad, absurd, ironic, contradicting, cynical etc. relations and moments in the normal, everyday and therefore 'real' world of human life.

Therefore street photography has the concept of the genuine instant but also the intuitive one chance process plays a major role.

Street photography is mostly driven by the following properties:

un-staged	not posed nor planed or staged
public	people and their surroundings within the public
commonplace	the daily human life in its everyday oddness
candid	candid moments of a split-second
emotional	from tragic to humorous
mixed subjects	Portrait, Architecture, Landscape and Reportage

(2) Surreality

Street Photography is realized very differently and the art imagery is mostly a mixture of history and up-to-date elements.

Above 'Meudon' from Kertész as an example for the 'surreality' imagery:

A train is passing the viaduct from right to left. In the foreground a man with a black hat is passing the street from left to right. In the background some people are moving in different directions. Nothing in this photograph is exceptional itself. There is no special incidence. This photograph does not declare something. The visual attraction is based on the contradictions. The massive, great viaduct is looking like a toy train, the well-dressed man in this poor environment? What does he carry in his arm? This photograph is reality, but it is also surreality, like a dream, painting or film scene -
'it is the surreality of real life'.

André Kertész (1894-1985) was a Hungarian-born photographer with ground- breaking contributions to the photographic composition and the photo essay.

(3) The Decisive Moment

'It is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.'
- Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a French painter and photographer with a big influence on real life reportage and candid photography. In 1947, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger founded the Magnum photographic agency. In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book 'The Decisive Moment' which gets a trend-setting on many photographers.

(4) Symbolism

There are a few single works of art that have changed the direction of their medium.

Robert Frank (1924-2019) and his photographic book 'The Americans', (attached some data on this series) published in 1958 summed up the American life-style in a way that no one had covered before and the book was heavily influential on the style of many photographers.

Robert Frank often has combined the everyday life with symbols, like the juke box, or the American flag to a series of iconographs on the time and place.

'I saw this guy take photographs.
And I want to be a photographer.
I want to go out in the street and take photographs of life.'

- Joel Meyerowitz - to his boss on quitting his job as advertising art director.

(5) The Raw Essence Of Life

'When I'm photographing, I see life,
That's what I deal with. I don't have pictures in my head.
I don't worry about how the picture is going to look.
I let that take care of itself.
It's not about making a nice picture.
That anyone can do.'

- Garry Winogrand -

Winogrand (1928-1984) was continuously chasing after the eternal nowness of life itself in all its raw, near, unmediated energy. Winogrand, Robert Frank and William Klein where focusing on the real essence without any kind of formal rationality. This approach still remains as the hugely influential figure on todays street photography.

William Klein (born 1928) is an American-born French photographer noticed for his ironic approach and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques against the established art styles.

(6) Color Composition

Stephen Shore (born 1947) began artistic photography at the age of fourteen, with 24 Shore became a solo exhibition at the MoMA.

Shore is known for his composed colored includes of banal scenes and objects.

Joel Meyerowitz (born 1938) began photographing in 1962 as a 'street photographer' in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Eugene Atget. In the mid 60´s, along with Stephen Shore and William Eggleston he was an early advocate of color photography.

His work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions and he is the author of 15 books, including 'Bystander: The History of Street Photography'.

(7) The Photographic Essay

In 1966 Bruce Davidson started a two-year project in East Harlem, NYC. He visited East Harlem daily, getting to know and takes contact to its inhabitants and photographing their lives. This photographic essay was published in a book titled "East 100th Street".

'Like the people who live on the block, I love and hate it and I keep going back.'
- Bruce Davidson -

Andreas Herzau (born 1962) is a German photographer working on Reportage, Essay and Portrait photography. He is documenting the many facets of human life as composed essays.

(8) History

The following overview is not to be understood as an academic chronology. Its just an attempt to combine the influences out of time period, technique and art to the development of street photography.

The thematic birthplace of street photography is Paris in the middle of the last century in terms of street = 'real life outside from the studio'.

The term 'Street Photography' itself where allocated by some New York photographers in the mid 60s in form of a 'non-commercial photography of the urban life'.

(9) Selected Photographer

photographer	born	performance
Eugene Atget	1857	aesthetic view on the streets of Paris
Alfred Stieglitz	1864	pioneer: photography as art
Paul Strand	1890	pioneer: photography as art
André Kertész	1894	'Whatever we have done, Kertesz did it first'
Dorothea Lange	1895	co-founder of documentary
Alfr. Eisenstaedt	1898	spontaneous moments, LIFE photographer
Brassaï	1899	'Paris de nuit' 1933
Walker Evans	1903	'American Photographs' 1938
Cartier-Bresson	1908	'The Decisive Moment' 1952
Willy Ronis	1910	humanistic photography
R. Doisneau	1912	street culture of Paris
Helen Levitt	1913	pioneer of colored street photography
Robert Frank	1924	'The Americans' 1959
Elliott Erwitt	1928	Member of Magnum - ironic, absurd situations
G. Winogrand	1928	raw, near street photographs
William Klein	1928	'against the established'
Leonard Freed	1929	Member of Magnum - classic photo essays
Fred Herzog	1933	Pioneer of Colored Street Photography
Bruce Davidson	1933	Member of Magnum,'East 100th Street' 1970
Lee Friedlander	1934	urban life, new elements
Joseph Koudelka	1938	Member of Magnum, 'Invasion Prague' 1968
Joel Meyerowitz	1938	artistic color photography - book author
W. Eggleston	1939	pioneer of daily motives as colored photo
S. Salgado	1944	many projects e.g 'Workers' 1993
Stephen Shore	1947	pioneer of color photography
Martin Parr	1952	Member of Magnum - innovative imagery
Alex Webb	1952	Member of Magnum - color street photography
Peter Bialobrzeski	1961	urbanity and humans habitat
Todd Hido	1968	urban and suburban human habitat
Matt Stuart	1974	nominee of Magnum, mainly active in London

(10) Bibliography, References

(1) 'Street Photography From Atget to Cartier-Bresson'
by Clive Scott - 2007
'This book describes the complex relationship with parallel literary trends as well as its more evident affinity with impressionist art.'

(2) 'Bystander: A History of Street Photography'
by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck - 1994
'The history of street photography described in both text and photographs.'

(3) 'OPEN CITY. Street Photographs since 1950'
by Russell Ferguson and Kerry Brougher and the Museum of Modern Art Oxford
'A good supplementation on the Bystander.'

(4) 'Great Street Photography constitutes a new way of seeing'
-> "Times Article by Nick Turpin"

(5) German 'Ja, was ist Sie denn, die Strassenfotografie ?'
-> Blog statement by Andreas Herzau

(6) ebook 'Storytelling in street photography'
-> eBook by Marie Laigneau

(7) ebook 'An Exploration of Creativity - through the lens of 8 contemporary street photographers.'
-> eBook 2016 by Marie Laigneau