Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Street Photography
"desaturating" a color shot doesn't really substitute. All of the really good ultra-high speed films best
suited for stealthy shooting are B&W anyhow.
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-- Colin James, November 29, 2000
The 'shyness or cowardice' was prompted by Phils own comment about taking a shot whilst in a car with
a telephoto.
The essence of street photography is not to isolate the subject from the surroundings. We are not dealing
with biological 'samples' here but People operating within their environment within their lives.
Ask yourself how you and your family would like to be treated by a street photographer? Shot from a
distance anonymously, detached from any context, your images used to entertain a rich American.
Or would you prefer the photographer to have the courage to attempt some sort of rapport and some
understanding and enter into your space with you rather than put you under his lens like some bug for
inspection? In other words to treat you with some respect as another human rather than just image
fodder.
Greater photographers than us have tussled with this subject. Try getting hold of 'Perspectives' by Don
Mccullin. It contains an excellent essay on the morality of photographing poverty , squalor, misery and
war and even just ordinary folk going about their normal lives.
Phil has elected himself to be a tutor on the subject of street photography but doesnt deal with any
questions beyond the technical ones. I feel strongly about people being having their images, unwittingly,
'mugged' from them.
-- Trevor Hare, November 30, 2000
Street photography? I am certainly not a specialist in classifying photography but I can hardly imagine
that most of the above pictures would fall into this category. Whether they are taken with a 24, 35, 50 or
85 mm lens on a colour or B+W film with or without flash is irrelevant, as long as they express
something about the subject. And street photography tells a lot about the photographer and his
interaction with the subjects.
What I can see in most of these pictures is a mocking attitude of a selfish photographer who was very
very remote from his victims (not only physically) and sometimes felt uneasy. The Tsukiji Market
http://www.photo.net/photo/street-photography (10 of 31)7/3/2005 2:18:44 AM