5: Street Photography with Cartier-Bresson

[Click image for larger version.]

Henri Cartier-Bresson

(Alicante, Valencia Province, Spain) 1933
Photograph
Magnum Photos

REFRESHER:

Keeping it simple today, slap me if I don't: just wanted to look at a natural evolution of genre art into the medium of photography.

And there are a lot of ways that happened, so specifically street photography¹ — the idea of venturing out onto any given street (literal or figurative) and snapping pictures of what you come across while interacting with the world. The great thing about photography as a medium is that it's relatively accessible, portable, instant enough to slip into nooks and crannies of experience that might otherwise be missed. The result these days: we have an unprecedented number of photographers from unique vantage points, with access to almost unlimited subjects, able to get out there (or in there) and be artists. Will all of what happens be great art — hell no. But great art can now come from more places².

Above is a sample from one of the early legends of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Picked him because this guy had an impeccable sense of composition, but this particular photo also demonstrates part of the fluidity of street photography, and genre art these days largely thanks to  photography. Tons of automatic questions open up when working with photos, many of them specifically relating to depictions of the 'real' world, the 'normal' — because after all, a camera is not supposed to be able to lie. So where's the line of what qualifies as normal/real when everything is technically 'real', and 'normal' now has even less definition than the no-definition it started with? Taking the above image as an example, with the figures knowingly interacting with the photographer like that: is this more of a portrait than a 'genre' work? Is it staged, and what degree of 'staged' would undercut the 'realness'? In what ways is this and is this not a genre photo? Is 'genre' even a helpful descriptor at this point?

For more examples of street photography, Vivian Maier is also excellent: some slideshows of her work are available online, only not featured here due to licensing restrictions I'd rather not bother with just now. There's also a documentary about Maier available on Amazon and Netflix. 

NOTES:

1. Full disclosure: I love street photography, and want to do way more of it. But I live in a small town and haven't yet figured out the ethics/legality of taking shots of people who could easily hunt me down later, especially since I'd want to turn a lot of those photos into paintings for potential profit. Hmm.

2. If you heard Ratatouille in this, it's because that is a freaking great movie.