To the Streets!

What is Street Photography?

Helen Levitt
New York, c.1940

Street photography is a genre of documentary photography that turns the lens on the everyday-ness of life, the typical people, places, events occurring.  Street photography seeks every emotion in the daily experience of living.  London Festival of Photography defines street photography as “un-posed, un-staged photography which captures, explores or questions contemporary society and the relationships between individuals and their surroundings.” (http://www.lfph.org/what-is-street-photography)

Vivian Maier
www.vivianmaier.com

“In one sense it can be thought of as a branch of documentary photography, but unlike traditional documentary its chief aim — or at least its chief effect — is seldom to document a particular subject, but rather to create photographs which strongly demonstrate the photographer's vision of the world.” (http://facweb.cs. depaul.edu /sgrais/street _photography.htm)

The London Festival of Photography finds it easier to define street photography as a method, rather than a genre: “Subjects and settings can vary greatly but the key elements of spontaneity, careful observation and an open mind ready to capture whatever appears in the viewfinder are essential.”

Paul Strand
Wall Street, New York, 1915

Personally, I find that I can look at street photography all day and always be amazed at the beauty, sadness and surprise of the frequent, the typical, the common goings on in the everyday world.  It is this innocent, un-staged, true feeling of these photographs that, I believe, must draw interest to such a genre of photography.

History of Street Photography        

   

Toulouse Lautrec

In beginning to think about how and why street photography came about, I was reminded of a similar switch in painting subjects, from the formal to the candid, from the staged to the happenstance.  Looking at street photographs, I immediately recalled familiar paintings of spaces and people existing in spaces, such as works by Toulouse Lautrec and Renoir.  Both of these painters were producing work around the turn of the 20^th century, which is when Eugene Atget began photographing the streets of Paris.

Eugene Atget
Avenue de Gobelins, Paris, 1925

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) is considered one of the first street photographers.  Working as an architectural photographer in Paris, Atget captured about 10,000 images of Paris, its buildings and streets.  “Atget’s allegiance to outdated photographic technology, his focus on pre-French Revolutionary architecture  and ornamentation, and his utilitarian approach to photography marked him as emphatically old school.  A dedicated commercial photographer, Atget never considered the images he made to be art; they were, he insisted, simply ‘documents’- visual records that he peddled mostly to painters and libraries.” (http://www.nga.gov/feature/atget/)  Towards the end of his life, Atget did several series documenting urban lifestyles and street trades.  It is in this switch to documenting the typical lives in the city that one begins to see the very clear influence Atget’s photographs had upon later street photographers.

Eugene Atget
Parisienne Prostitute, c.1921

Street photography has perhaps always required certain spontaneity, a certain ease of movement as the photographer moves about the streets in search of a shot.  The development of the first small-bodied cameras (Kodak in 1880s and Leica in 1920s) allowed for photographers to be constantly on the move rather than the use of a stable, large format camera.   Additionally, the use of wet-plate technology required a premeditated and slow preparation process before taking photographs.  With the use of paper negatives, photographers were able to move about the streets with cameras loaded and ready for spontaneous photography.  (Bystander, 73)  Once cameras and techniques became portable and practical to carry around, photographers began photographing life as it was occurring around them.

4 Street Photographers

Henri Cartier-Bresson

1908-2004, French

Henri Cartier Bresson

Cartier-Bresson's photography combines the simplicity of the geometric forms with surrealistic images of human subjects.  His photographs are known for their human and gaiety.

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954

Paul Strand

1890-1976, American

Paul Strand
Blind, 1916

Well-known for his early 1900s photographs of New York.  In his photographs, Strand had the ability to turn architecture into mere shapes and shadows, and people into intimate and sad subjects.

Helen Levitt
1913-2009, American

A New York City photographer, Levitt is known for her sensitive and sometimes comic photographs of  children in the city.  Levitt shot in both black-and-white and color film, rare for street photographers at that time.

Helen Levitt
New York, c.1980

Bernice Abbott

Bernice Abbott
Blossom Restaurant, 1935

1898-1901, American

Strongly influenced by Eugene Atget's photographs of the dilapidated architecture of Paris, Abbott chronicled New York city in images of its buildings and people at work.  Abbott wanted her work to illustrate the relationship and connections between the people of the city, and the physical, moving entity of New York City. 

There is something about looking at a discrete, four-sided image that forces us to see things differently than if we were to glimpse the same instant in real life.  Street photographers see the world in discrete images, capturing them for the rest of us, prompting us all to look differently at our environments, the people living around us, and our streets. 

Works Cited:

Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz.Bystander: a history of street photography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Print.

Scott, Clive. Street photography from Atget to Cartier-Bresson. London: I.B. Tauris ;, 2007. Print.

" The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) ." The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) . N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2013. <http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/112442##ixzz2Rd42Sb7iSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art>.

"Home - London Festival of Photography."Home - London Festival of Photography. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://www.lfph.org/what-is-street-photography

>.

"Atget: The Art of Documentary Photography." National Gallery of Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2013. <http://www.nga.gov/feature/atget/>.t/

Bob Adelman (and other Civil Rights photographers)

Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s played a pivotal role in promoting change and acceptance of change through the United States.  These photographers were responsible for creating the visual material that would enlist supporters of the civil rights movement.  "Observers in the 1960s and historians in the decades since have consistently credited news photographs of attack dogs and water hoses in Birmingham with wielding a unique power over white America. The images are lauded for generating white liberal sympathy in the north for the plight of black protestors in the south, for hardening northern resolve against the excesses of the racist Jim Crow system and providing President Kennedy and Congress the political cover to push long-stalled civil rights legislation." (Martin, 2010)

So many of these photographs worked to increase awareness of the mistreatment, segregation, racism, and inequalities of African Americans in the 1960s.  Some of these photos generated financial support for the movement, as well as legal and press support. 

In addition to playing such a large role in the movement while it was happening, civil rights photography continues to be the primary source for current communal memory of the civil rights movement.  "Today's memory of civil rights movement culture - probably more so than the cultural memory of any social movement before - is largely based on mediated images: photographs, television, and documentary film footage." (Miller, p.107)

Bob Adelman was a prominent civil rights photographer, responsible for taking many of the most memorable and iconic images from the movement.  Adelman collaborated with the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to create and distribute powerful images that promoted the civil rights movement and fight for equality.  This collaboration targeted the hearts and sympathies of white America.  "In effect, within a political landscape that received its dynamite from the power of the mediated image, "taking action" meant delivering "ready-mades" of history to a public starving to be fed with sensation and in which political stances were severely influenced by visual and televised documents." (Miller, p.108)

Photographers of the civil rights movement, similar to war photographers, acted as the primary mediators for transmitting images to the general public.  However, while these images did generate sympathy and support from white Americans, this support was easily given at a distance from the white Americans in the North when viewing images of the protests and rallies in the South.  Once the demonstrations moved up to the North, white Americans who had felt sympathy and rage at the brutal treatment of blacks in the South, were forced to face their own institutionalized and deep seated personal racism.  

"Photographs read in isolation illustrated racism as an interpersonal problem – evil white officials and mobs inflicting injury on innocent blacks – and this obscured the structural inequalities that benefited whites in the south and north. And in picturing "racists" as the most violent southern thugs, the photographs let northern whites imagine their own politics as progressive, or at least humane, never challenging them to examine their systems of belief. The absence of any meaningful social or historical context allowed whites to "feel" for blacks, untroubled by their own stake in a racially oppressive system. The images could then generate sympathetic reactions and incremental reforms for blacks without disturbing the underlying racial values that allowed social inequalities and even violence to continue." (Berger, pg.14)

Bob Adelman and other photographers of the civil rights movement were essential in the success of the fight for equality and human rights.  They documented an historic time in the United States and their iconic photographs created a strong momentum toward acceptance of equality and the civil rights movement.

Resources:

Martin A. Berger, "Fixing Images: Civil Rights Photography and the Struggle Over Representation," RIHA Journal 0010 http://www.riha- journal.org/articles/2010/berger-fixing-images 

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4126/bronx-museum-revisits-the-civil-rights-movement#.UWdIxM127DU

Zoe Trodd. "Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (review)." Journal for the Study of Radicalism 6.2 (2012): 149-151. Project MUSE. Web. 12 Apr. 2013. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Miller, Patrick B., Therese Steffen, and Elisabeth Wünsche. The civil rights movement revisited: critical perspectives on the struggle for racial equality in the United States. Münster: Lit ;, 2001.

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=2K1HZOCFJEOUT

Cyanotype Process

The cyanotype process was one of the first non-silver technologies invented to create photographic images.  Cyanotypes are most recognizable for their continuous Prussian Blue tone.

Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) was a British scientist, astronomer, and chemist.  Herschel invented the use of “hypo” as a fixing agent in photography by first discovering the ability of hyposulfite to dissolve otherwise difficult to dissolve silver salts.  Herschel also developed the use of sensitized paper for photographic processes.  In 1842, Herschel invented a cheap, easy, and relatively non-toxic photographic method called cyanotype.  Although Herschel developed the cyanotype process, he had little interest in producing photographs.

 

Cyanotypes’ Prussian Blue color is created by using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.  These two chemicals are mixed and used to sensitize paper by painting the paper with the chemical mixture in the dark.  A photographic negative is placed on top of the sensitized paper before exposing it to ultraviolet light.  When the iron salts on the paper are exposed to ultraviolet light, or sunlight in most cases, they are reduced to their ferrous state, which, when oxidized, creates a high contrast, easily identifiable blue image.  Once the image has been exposed by the ultraviolet light, the paper is washed with water to remove un-oxidized iron salts.

Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was a British botanist and photographer.  In 1843, Atkins printed and published a scientific reference book of botanical specimens called “British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions”.  Rather than using a photographic negative, Atkins created her algae images by placing plant specimens directly onto the sensitized paper.  Atkins’s book was the first published book to be illustrated with cyanotypes.

“The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects as minute as many of the Algae and Confera, has induced me to avail myself of Sir John Hershel’s beautiful process of Cyanotype, to obtain impressions of the plants themselves, which I have much pleasure in offering to my botanical friends.” – Anna Atkins, October 1843 

Today, cyanotypes are still used, but primarily for architectural and mechanical drawings, typically called “blueprints”.  The cyanotype photographic process produces a relatively stable print, ensuring that the prints will last for a long time with minimal fading and little preservation necessary.

References:

Ritzenthaler, Vogt-O'Connor, Zinkham, Carnell, & Peterson (2006). Photographs: Archival care and management. [referred to as P:ACM] Chicago: Society of American Archivists.

James, C. (2002). The book of alternative photographic processes. Albany, N.Y.: Delmar Thomson Learning.

http://venetianred.net/2010/05/08/anna-atkins-mistress-of-blueprint-manor/

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1542&page=1

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/~/media/Files/NMeM/PDF/Collecti   

ons/Photography/CyanotypeProcess.ashx

http://www.sciencecompany.com/The-Cyanotype-Process-W164.aspx

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1917

http://www.sciencelogs.com/2012/10/anna-atkins.html

Anna Atkins’s Photographs of British Algae:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/sets/72157610898556889/detail/

Photographic Archives

The above screenshot is of the UMass Amherst Special Collections and Universal Archives' Tass Sovfoto Photograph Collection.  I think the finding aid does a good job of giving details about the photographer as well as the dates and depiction in the images.  

The above is a Harvard record and doesn't do a very good job of giving detail on the photographs.  This collection level record is for a collection of 500,000 images.  "The photographic print file contains approximately 250,000 images, most from ca. 1860-1920. The negative collection includes about 80,000 images, including glass-plate negatives dating back to 1880. Color material includes over 109,000 35 mm. slides, and over 800 4"x5" transparencies of museum objects photographed in the department's studio. Also 6,000 glass lantern slides, 36 daguerreotypes, and 250 hand-colored 19th-century albumen prints of Japan."  These images could have at least been separated into their specific genres.

 However, I like that both of these records contain extensive subjects for users to select and view more similar subject collections.  I think the subjects allow for more direction to and from these photographic archives.

Acquisitions

When thinking about appraisal of photographs and other archival materials, I immediately begin considering the responsibility that acquiring an object entails.  To acquire a photograph, the archivist must consider the cost (time, preservation, access, housing, etc.) that it will take to maintain stewardship of the photograph in perpetuity.  In many cases, I think this cost can be significant and a good way of measuring whether or not a photograph should be acquired in an Archives.  These considerations also come into play when appraising a photograph in terms of it's value to an individual Archives.  In other words, "is the cost of stewardship for this photograph worth it to our Archives?"

Another important consideration in determining the value of a photographic collection is to consult one's collection scope and acquisitions policy.  A collection scope should outline what types, themes, or geographic regional collections an Archives' is focused on developing.  An acquisitions policy can often outline the necessary conditions of a collection, physical, legal, etc.

Origin info and provenance are also important in determining and appraising the value of a collection.  A photograph will likely have very little research value, unless there is significant information and metadata about where, when, why, who, etc.  Some of these questions can be answered with an understanding of historical photographic processes and concerns.  With knowledge of these processes and historic conventions (of dress, posture, theme, etc.), an archivist or historian could date a photograph and provide important appraisal information.

Women's Self Defense - 1906

Creator:  Byron Company (New York, N.Y.)
Title:  Women's Self Defense 1906 Dr. Latson's Method.
Date:  1906
Description:  A woman demonstrating self defense on a male "attacker"; the woman uses her umbrella to ward off the attack.
Repository:  Museum of the City of New York

I love both the content and the theatric feel of this photograph. There is a certain humor in the heavily shadowed, white backdropped staging. Also, I just love the image of a woman beating off a young boy with an umbrella.