“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” —Diane Arbus
It’s a new year, and with that comes a new art post. Today, we’re going to focus on the charms of Street Photography. As a genre, the practice of capturing candid moments in public spaces has been around since the early 1900s, when the invention of the portable camera made that sort of thing possible. Early adopters included names like Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson who popularized the practice in the 1920s and 30s, and paved the way for modern street photography.
In the 1950s and 60s street photography flourished, thanks to the rise of faster, more accessible cameras and film. Many photographers chose to visually document the changing social and political landscape in America and juggle the issue of consent and permission in their work; how public is public, and do you ask if people are involved, or do you take the shot anyway? There was also a sense of equality with being a street photographer because the camera didn’t care what race the person was, their sex or income…all that mattered is what they chose to capture. And while many have answered the call, there are the photographers who excel and are the creme of de creme, whose work is instantly recognizable. Today, I want to highlight the work of people who I consider “street photography royalty” whose work I love (faves Dawood Bey and Berenice Abbott have been featured in previous art posts and will not be discussed today). As usual, you can read about these photographers, or you can simply look at the images; the choice is yours.
OP NOTE: Because of the nature of this work this post is extremely image heavy. I had a hard time selecting images because every one of these photographers are the best at what they do, and their respective bodies of work is amazing. I have placed the work of each photographer behind cuts in each section as a courtesy to our mobile users.
Emperor of Vision: Gordon Parks
“”The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.” —Gordon Parks
In the hierarchy of street photography, few are higher than Gordon Parks. Born in segregation in Kansas, his first exposure to photography was when he saw images of migrant workers taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers in a magazine. That was when he bought a second hand camera from a pawnshop and taught himself how to use it, and despite no professional training his talent was enough for him to win the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942. This led to portions at the FSA in D.C. and the Office of War Information (OWI), where his personal style in chronicling the nation’s social conditions made him one of the most celebrated photographers of his time.
Parks was also the freelance photographer of choice for Glamour and Ebony from the late 40s through the 60s, and the combination of his distinct style with John Johnson (publisher of the Johnson Publishing empire and owner of Ebony) desire to showcase Black upper mobility in his publications made his work a hit in Black households at that time. However, it was his position as the first Black staff photographer for Life magazine that gave him widespread acclaim and made him a household name. Parks would remain at the magazine for two decades, covering subjects ranging from racism and poverty to fashion and entertainment, and taking memorable pictures of such figures as Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Iman, and Stokely Carmichael. His most famous images, for instance American Gothic (1942) and Emerging Man (1952), capture the essence of his activism and humanitarianism and have become iconic, defining their generation.
Parks spent much of the last three decades of his life evolving his artistic style, and he continued working until his death in 2006. Today, archives of Parks’s work reside at a number of institutions, including The Gordon Parks Foundation, The Gordon Parks Museum (Fort Scott, Kansas), Wichita State University, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian.
Queen of Candids: Vivian Maier
“Photography is not an invention – it’s a discovery.” —Vivian Maier
The woman who became known as the Queen of Candids led a rather humble life. Born in New York City in 1926, Vivian Maier spent much of her life working as a nanny for various families in Chicago and other cities. She also had a passion for photography. Possessed with an innate creative eye and armed with her trusty Rolleiflex camera, Vivian roamed the streets capturing candid moments of daily life, often focusing on the marginalized and overlooked individuals who inhabited the city. Spanning several decades, her work showcases an amazing range of subjects from the city itself to the intimacy of strangers.
It was only by chance that Maier posthumously become one of the most celebrated street photographers of the 20th century. A free spirit, Vivian became impoverished and was ultimately saved by three of the children she had nannied earlier in her life. Remembering Maier fondly as their second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and the best care for her in her later years. Sadly, Maier eventually died, and unbeknownst to her former “children” one of Vivian’s storage lockers was auctioned off due to delinquent payments.
In those storage lockers lay the massive hoard of negatives Maier secretly stashed throughout her lifetime which the world would have never known about, if not for a man named John Maloof. He purchased one of the storage lockers and became obsessed with Vivian’s work, and has since made it his life’s work that both Vivian and her photographs become known worldwide. He managed to reconstruct most of Vivian’s archives after obtaining the negatives from the various buyers attending that auction. Since then, her work has been exhibited in museums and art venues around the world.
King of Composition: Yasuhiro Ishimoto
“Everything is alive. I want to make a record of things that are living, to add my small voice to the voices they raise.” —Yasuhiro Ishimoto
My introduction to Ishimoto’s work was entirely by accident. One blazing hot late afternoon I ducked into The Art Institute to cool off, as admission was free for the last two hours of the day. I wandered down to the photography wing where a retrospective of his work was taking place, and magic happened. Seeing Ishimoto’s photographs for the first time took me to another place; the film he used and his mastery with image placement was perfect but for me I could see the neighborhoods and Chicago I grew up in, yet simultaneously seeing similar environments in Toyko and having a sense of familiarity there in his work. I became obsessed with him, and discovered that his life was as unique as his approach in photography to bridge East and West.
[Contemplate the quiet anxieties of urban life…]
Born in California in 1921, he was raised in Japan and came back to the U.S. as a young man, just in time for WWII and the racism and internment camps of those times. Upon his release from the Amache concentration camp in 1942 Ishimoto moved to Chicago, where he studied at Chicago’s famed Institute of Design (aka “Mies Van Der Rohl-ville, and the school Academic Ghost Daddy Moholy Nagy founded). Ishimoto studied with photographers such as Aaron Siskind and Harry M. Callahan; Callahan in particular was less interested in the theoretical dimensions of photography, and instead encouraged his students to go out into the city and take a more freeform approach to photographing whatever interested them most. It was here Ishimoto encountered avant-garde publications such as György Kepes’ The Language of Vision and László Moholy-Nagy’s Vision in Motion, (OP Note: I highly recommend both of these books to anyone involved in the Visual Arts) both of which helped him develop his signature style of dynamic compositions, bold geometric forms, and a keen sense of light and shadow.
Because of his sense of being an “outsider” (both as an American in Japan, and then as a POC in the United States) Ishimoto often chose to photograph people who were also considered outsiders. Residents of Black and Latino neighborhoods soon got used to the polite Japanese man with the camera, and as a result documentation of neighborhoods and buildings long gone still exist. Often traveling between Chicago and Tokyo before returning to Japan in 1961 Ishimoto documented street scenes and everyday life in both places, often seeking compositional similarities between the two.
Ishimoto is also known for his photographic series of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto. He first visited the villa in 1954 and was later granted permission to photograph it in its entirety in 1955, being one of a few people granted that privilege. Ishimoto would later revisit the site in November 1981 and February 1982, this time photographing the villa in both black-and-white and color using a Sinar camera with a variety of lenses.
Ishimoto’s work is held in numerous major museum collections around the world. After his death in 2012 his family donated prints, negatives, camera equipment, and other archival materials to the Museum of Art, Kōchi, who established the Ishimoto Yasuhiro Photo Center in order to foster continued preservation efforts and encourage further research on the photographer’s work.
Prince of Unmediated Encounters: Gary Winograd
“I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” —Garry Winogrand
Few photographers have been able to capture the spirit of 60s/70s New York City like Gary Winograd. Born and raised in a predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, Winogrand worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s. He caught the world’s attention when his photograph of a beach scene of a man playfully lifting a woman above the waves appeared in the The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1955, which then toured the world to be seen by 9 million visitors.
[Street photography is an attitude…]
Winogrand was one of three photographers featured in New Documents, the influential 1967 Museum of Modern Art exhibition curated by John Szarkowski, which introduced Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus to a wider audience. From that point on, his renown only grew. He was described by Phil Coomes (writing for BBC News in 2013) as “essentially a New York photographer: frenetic, in-your-face, arty despite himself.” His accolades only grew, with 3 Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and several solo exhibitions at museums including at MoMa and galleries in San Francisco, Texas New York, and Paris. Being a man who also liked to give knowledge to future generations, he supported himself in the 1970s by teaching in schools with notable photography programs; first in New York, then Chicago at the Institute of Design, and then at the University of Texas at Austin.
In his lifetime, Winogrand published four monographs: The Animals (1969), Women are Beautiful (1975), Public Relations (1977) and Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). Winogrand died in 1984 at age 56 from gallbladder cancer. In 2019 his retrospective “Garry Winogrand: Color” at the Brooklyn Museum broke records and was a very fine show indeed. Today, the Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) comprises over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35 mm colour slides as well as a small number of Polaroid prints and several amateur and independent motion picture films.
Grand Duke of Light & Shadow: Fan Ho
“Photography is a universal language that transcends the barriers of culture and time.” —Fan Ho
Though lesser known than some of his Western contemporaries, Fan Ho was one of the most important street photographers of the 20th century. He is known for his remarkable images of Hong Kong during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Shanghai in 1931, Fan Ho moved to Hong Kong with his family in 1949. He began exploring photography at the age of 13, using a Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father. He quickly developed a passion for the medium and started capturing the streets and people of Hong Kong. In addition to his mastery of light, Fan Ho had a sharp eye for capturing the essence of his subjects. His images often feature the contrast between old and new, highlighting the rapid modernization of Hong Kong during that period.
He has frequently been dubbed ‘The Cartier-Bresson of the East’, and comparisons with the master photographer are well-deserved. As prolific as he was talented, he created much of his most notable work before the age of 30, and later moved to the film industry, briefly as an actor, and later, as a director.
Fan Ho’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the Fotografiska in Stockholm. His photographs continue to inspire generations of photographers who are drawn to the beauty and complexity of urban life, and who marvel at the beauty of light.
Marquess of Street Portraiture: Jamel Shabazz
“My camera is my compass; it’s guided me to so many different places. The photograph is to a great degree evidence of the conversation I had with the person. It’s a part of my visual diary.” —Jamel Shabazz
80’s New York City was a wild time. It was gritty, explosive, and a cultural melting pot of punks, New Wavers, Hip Hop, Art, and money. Fabulous drag balls were occurring in Harlem, a pre-fame Madonna was dancing at the Mudd Clubb (legendary Downtown nightclub), while Basquiat painted his “Samo” tag all over the Lower East Side and Haring was pretty much spray painting everything. It was an creative incubator where music, art, culture, and commerce all swirled together and spilled into the streets. You didn’t need a lot of money in those days to create your art either; you could literally sell your wares on the street, and there was a lot of inspiration to be had.
This is the type of environment Jamel Shabazz came of age in. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of fifteen he picked up his first camera and started to photograph his friends and the people in his community. Inspired by acclaimed photographers Leonard Freed, James Van Der Zee, and Gordon Parks, he wanted to emulate their work. Wanting to offer visual alternatives to the era’s prevailing media narratives about Black neighborhoods (crack, crack, and more crack; say no to drugs!), he embarked on a mission to extensively documenting the energy of New York street life and culture through everyday people and their communities. He wanted to capture the spirit of Black joy and self-determination in his work, and the streets and subway system became backdrops for many of his photographs.
The nature of Street Photography can often raise issues of consent, ethics, and ownership. Shabazz’s subjects are very aware they are being photographed; they look at the camera boldly, often with a spirit of defiance. They are caught in the everyday; hanging out with friends, riding the subway, selling mixtapes, breakdancing, and showcases an era of New York that no longer exists. Shabazz’s work is a photographic time capsule chronicling the birth of Hip Hop.
“The majority of the people I’ve taken photographs of, I’ve had conversations with. ‘What are your goals and aspirations?’ ‘What are you about?’ It’s not just about me capturing the image; I want to know what you are about.”
Duchess of Documentation: Jill Freedman
“I hate cheap pictures. I hate pictures that make people look like they’re not worth much, just to prove a photographer’s point.” —Jill Freedman
There are certain people whose passion and lust for life is illustrated through their creative endeavors. Jill Freedman is one such person. Born in Pittsburg in 1939, the bohemian free spirit that she would later become known for was evident at an early age; after graduating from college with a degree in sociology Freedman worked at a kibbutz in Israel and sang for her supper in Paris and London before arriving in New York City in 1964. She then spent a couple of years working straight jobs in advertising (none which she liked) until waking up one morning in 1966 with a sudden desire to take photographs.
“I’d never taken a picture,” she said, “and I woke up wanting a camera.” She borrowed a friend’s camera to shoot an antiwar demonstration going on in NYC at that time and was bit by the photographer bug.
Freedman’s work can be described as part documentary, part activism; after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Freedman moved into a plywood shantytown erected in Washington by the Poor People’s Campaign, which he had organized. It was those photographs that landed her in Life magazine and produced her first book, “Old News: Resurrection City,” in 1971. She then literally “followed the circus” for two months, living in a Volkswagen kombi and wanting to photograph the performers as people photographing “two shows a day and one show each Sunday. Seven weeks of one night stands”, and moving across New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Ohio. This work was published as a book, Circus Days, in 1975.
Other areas of photographic interest included 42nd street (which was proper seedy back then) and the arts scene in Studio 54 and SoHo. 70s New York was completely feral, and Freedman’s total immersion in the environment that produced her work became part of a pattern. For two years she attached herself to firefighters and street cops in the tinderboxes of Harlem and the South Bronx, sleeping in firehouses or the chief’s car. Often the only woman in these environments, she was able to capture men behaving in ways that they might not have in front of a male photographer.
Freedman wasn’t able to reach the career accolades enjoyed by Diane Arbus and some of her male peers during her lifetime, but her award-winning work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, among others.
Duke of Storytelling: Joseph Rodriguez
“Raised in violence, I enacted my own violence upon the world and myself. What saved me was the camera — its ability to gaze upon, to focus, to investigate, to reclaim, to resist, to re-envision.” —Joseph Rodriguez
New York seems to have its share of documentary photographers, and Joseph Rodriguez is no exception. Born in 1951 and raised in Brooklyn, Rodriguez studied photography in the School of Visual Arts and in the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York City. From 1977 to 1985 he supported himself by driving a cab, and in the last two years of his studies often photographed while working. His star first began to rise when he received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1993 to photograph gang families in East Los Angeles, and in 1985 he graduated with a Photojournalism and Documentary Diploma from the International Center of Photography in New York.
[Tell me your story and I will show you no lies…]
A big part of being a documentary photographer means getting deep into the trenches, and having the ability to see the humanity in everyone. Besides documenting his experiences as a NYC cab driver, Rodriquez’s photographic journeys took him from East L.A. to the juvenile court system, Spanish Harlem in the 80s, Mexico City, and New Orleans after Katrina. His lens offers an empathetic look at the lives of individuals who are often horribly depicted in popular media. Over the years the photographer’s scope expanded; though he has stayed honed in on the humanist element that is found in all of his work. His work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art, and have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, BBC News and more, in addition to producing several books.
Today he continues to work within the social documentary practice, covering the struggles of everyday life. ““Young photographers need to understand that they are living in history. They need to ask themselves simple questions: do I really want to document this? Am I hungry enough to do this? They need to understand that photography allows them to reach people, to touch people. And they need to understand that people can change. At least those who are allowed to do so. I keep documenting their lives and communicating through my platforms, I keep showing human beings. And this is what has always driven me to love photography.” Joseph Rodriguez continues to tell stories that diminish this distance, and allows for a better understanding of the lives of others.
Die Quellen:
All of these photographers were/are quite prolific, and this post is just a small sample of their work. I strongly recommend perusing the sources I’ve used below for this post to get more information and to view more of their work.
Gordon Parks: Website | Instagram
Vivian Maier: Website
Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Website | Note: Certain images displayed here are from OP’s copy of “Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities” which is now out of print.
Gary Winogrand: Bio and Gallery
Jamel Shabazz: Instagram | New Yorker Article
Jill Freeman: Website | NYT Obit
Joseph Rodriguez: Website | Interview
This concludes today’s lesson. Do you like photography, ONTD? Who are your faves, and what are your favorite pictures? Show your work, and have fun!
