Photography as Meditation

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Street Photography

The term “street photography” came into usage in the 1920s, but there exist examples of these types of images from as early as the end of the 19^th century, when photographers began looking beyond the ivory tower of static photography, a staged and idealized art form, to pictures of “life on the streets.” A type of photographer emerged who could drift through the city and its inconsistent cast of characters, capturing images using hand-held photography techniques. The underlying principles of the art form changed, allowing random, casual, surprising, volatile, and mundane urban life experiences to become the photographer’s subject matter. The camera found a new role as an extension of the subjective gaze, and the metropolitan ...