The "pure" photography of the "snapshot" has always been the easiest entry into the world of "personal" photography. The social interest of the subject, combined with the photographer's legendary speed of reaction and the freezing of movement, capture the attention of both the novice photographer and the visually illiterate viewer. The photography teacher knows that the student will more readily accept a photojournalistic style photographer than another with a static thematic, for the purpose of whose photographic intervention more questions arise.
This photography was characterized as "street photography," a term arbitrary and misleading, which covers extremely different photographers, with their majority of snapshots as their only common feature. Often, for the sake of broader communication, we are all obliged to use this term, which, it is true, has now become established.
Street photography has representatives of high artistic quality and, consequently, complex artistic propositions. Therefore, its quick acceptance is suspect, as it probably hides a completely superficial approach, related to their reportage style and the social presence of their subjects, not the substantial aesthetic proposition they carry. The photographic work of Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Frank, or Winogrand requires deeper and more careful study to be understood beyond the superficial or thematic initial approach, at least as much attention as the work of other, theoretically more hermetic photographers, such as Evans, Atget, or Sander.
Moreover, the formalistic aspect was mistakenly considered the artistic dimension in the otherwise self-sufficient subject. In other words, for a wide range of photographers, and an even broader section of viewers, Winogrand is characterized by his crooked frames, Cartier-Bresson by his frozen motion, Frank by the grain of his film, or the blur in interior spaces, and the entire Magnum agency by their wide-angle lenses. Although these observations are not without truth, it is not right to generalize them and turn them into formulas. A more careful study of the work of the great representatives of "street photography" will show us that each form differs radically from one photographer to another, creating from the outset a unique and substantial content. The form then is nothing but the syntax and grammar of a personal poetry.
The widespread notion that street photography means geometric composition even led a notable Greek photographer to make a, in my opinion, erroneous observation, stated years ago in an interview in the magazine "Commentator," where he claimed that street photography is closely related to form and for this reason developed in Europe with its cobblestone streets and old buildings. He further wondered how it is possible to do street photography on Lekka Street or Praxitelous Street. Similar positions led photographers in our country either to shun street photography, considering it to represent nothing but a superficial photographic language capable of being articulated by anyone with a wide-angle lens, and possibly a motor-drive, or to apply it by reproducing with depressive monotony exactly what a wide-angle lens, and possibly a motor-drive, can superficially render.
In art, what appears easiest is substantively the most difficult. Therefore, young photographers throughout Greece should not think that the opportunistic bombardment of our unsuspecting and defenseless social surroundings will quickly and easily secure them interesting photography and a personal artistic style. Most often, they will end up with a collection of folkloric or humorous snapshots, which for artistic photography are what witty aphorisms are for literature.
However, if these young photographers choose to study the great "street photographers," they will find:
First, that their subjects are not inherently interesting most of the time, only in relation to the photographic (not real) event and, even further, as part of the photographer's overall work. Therefore, we should not be surprised that a clearly inferior photographer to Cartier-Bresson, such as Robert Doisneau, had a plethora of images with notable originality, which demonstrated an exploratory ability and sparkling humor, unlike Cartier-Bresson, whose photographs cannot even be described due to a lack of stunning details, yet they represent a far more original and interesting approach to the world and the photographic medium than those of Doisneau.
Second, that for all these photographers, the process of photographic capture is directly linked to the result (as indeed happens with all types of photography) and that this process presupposes daily dedication to the subject and many meters of film and not seasonal engagement, something that would fit another style and type of images. You can do great work like Sander working at regular intervals, but you cannot do great work like Kertesz unless the camera becomes an extension of your body. This does not constitute a value judgment for one or the other photographic version, but simply and only an observation that every photographic work has the photographic process that suits it.
Third, that the choice of a lens, a type of print, a low or high shooting angle, is less arbitrary than it seems. In all great photographers, these elements (whether they emerged or were pre-decided) compose a personal image of the world and not an opportunity to impress the most vulnerable (i.e., uneducated) part of the audience.
It is certainly worth it for young photographers to engage with "street photography," which has already bequeathed us so much. Only they must do so with the seriousness, dedication, persistence, and knowledge that it deserves. Recognizing the difficulties will lead to more careful engagement with it, and will free us from the tedious repetition of "photographic moments" that will be nothing more than a simple description of insignificant events or indifferent beauty. Because young photographers must realize that no event is so significant and no beauty so absolute as to be worth photographing. They derive their value from the flow of life they participate in, and their simple isolation is not enough to give them a significance commensurate with the life that has been removed from them. The photographer must realize that a "photographic moment" means something different from a "moment of life," and if the desired transformation is not achieved with his intervention, then there is no photography beyond the pale imitation of life. Attempting to evoke interest by invoking the in-life significance of the depicted betrays in the final analysis a questionable result of artistic populism.
Great photographers (of the street or otherwise) managed to generate photographs, even if it seems deceptive as in the images of Cartier-Bresson or Kertesz, that they discovered them. Without their presence, the depicted would lack all significance. In this transformation process, it is certain that form also plays a primary role, though it is never obvious or isolated. There is no good photography (regardless of type) without dynamic form. And it is an unjustifiable arbitrariness to burden "street photography" with a formalism, which it neither claims nor justifies. In all types of photography, those photographers who provocatively reveal the attire of their photography, leaving the content naked, are poor. Conversely, those who transform the attire, that is, the form, into content, so that the viewer is unable to remove it (and the copier to copy it), are worthy.
However, another confusion that works against "street photography" is that which equates it with photojournalistic photography. This equally harms the latter, as it imposes behaviors that are not necessary for it. Because we must emphasize that photojournalism is nothing else but a form of applied photography with journalistic, informative, humanitarian, or other specific goals, which it must serve. The fact that it handles subjects, or moves in spaces, that are related to those of artistic street photography should not surprise us, nor should it lead us to related evaluations. Otherwise, we would have to consider the photo booth for ID photos a colleague of Sander and the writers of police bulletins peers of Dostoevsky (since the latter frequently described criminal acts).
Unfortunately, young photographers confuse their ambition for exposure through journalistic prints, and their desire to change the wrongs, with the wish to resemble the great "of the street." Sooner or later the exposure will fade, since it is temporarily satisfied. The change will prove, as always, a sham. And what will remain is the illusion of imitating the great, which in turn will recede behind the increasingly strict demands of the career. Thus will come the time when the young photographer will realize that it is impossible to hit two (much less three) birds with one stone, and that it is better to pursue the success of a single goal.
Then we will be rid of the so-called artistic photography of newspapers and magazines, as it is done. That is, the notion that: for a good journalistic photograph we choose black and white film, preferably high-grain, use a Leica, if our finances allow, a very wide-angle lens, at least 28 millimeters, or even better 24, or, if we are in despair, 21 millimeters, we make sure to include at least one oversized element, such as a hand, gun, head, etc. from the foreground, while a plethora of other information (?) covers the frame, based on the principle that the more and the more chaotic the better.
Its place will be taken by the notion that: the photojournalist has something specific to say and must say it quickly, clearly, effectively, with aesthetics and quality. Then the young photojournalists will understand that they are not leaving behind an artistic work, as an artist does, but a style and ethos of professional behavior, exactly like a journalist, the quality of which is not determined by the sum of his good articles (which in any case never constitute literature). Then exactly these young photographers will understand that the photographs, which made the photographers mentioned above famous, could never accompany a journalistic text, except after a highly arbitrary and distortive reading. Their photographs do not speak about specific, and even less interesting, topics of the real world, but about personal moments of the world, as photographed by the photographer. This precisely gives the special value to an otherwise indifferent cyclist of Cartier-Bresson, or to an otherwise indifferent crossroads of Kertesz, or to an otherwise indifferent sign of Evans, or to an otherwise indifferent chimpanzee of Winogrand. The form, sometimes more evident and sometimes less, but always present and dynamic, constitutes the content. It neither replaces nor suffocates it.
But we must also note another misunderstanding of photojournalists everywhere. That is, that the form operates independently of the subject and not in balance with it. However, if they have to deal with a charged real-life topic, from those that are very difficult for anyone to transform into pieces of photographed world (beyond the question of whether there is a reason to do it), then the form they adopt must be discreet and exploit the very power of the subject. Not try to compete with the subject with the form, nor add formalistic intensity to the already existing one. W. Eugene Smith could be a lesson for many of our contemporaries. Especially for handling charged topics, such as the mental hospital in Haiti, or the Pacific War. Conversely, today, most photographers treat in the same way, either a daily street scene, which they are called to make interesting with their own intervention, or the description of a starving child, or an injured soldier. In the latter case, the clever photographer would reduce, through form, the significance of his own presence.
Therefore, if young photographers confront artistic creation separately from the demands of their professional career (the opportunistic mixtures of which are nothing but happy coincidences and not the rule), if they realize that each topic seeks its own form and its own approach, and that a strong form does not guarantee an interesting photograph, and if, finally, they understand that street photography describes the obsessions of the photographer and not the moments of the world, then we will gain better photojournalists and more significant creators.
Plato Rivellis