The Art of Black and White Photography, 2nd Edition

6   Street Photography

Good photography does not always have to capture special moments; it can also devote itself to the seemingly trivial and commonplace.

Photographing people on the street is a challenge. How do you skillfully integrate strangers into a pictorial composition and still manage to maintain discretion?

So-called street photography has a long tradition. As early as the late nineteenth century, photographers started turning their attention from the ivory towers of static, staged, and idealized artistic photography to life on the streets. This direction often mirrored social reform. The camera served as an objective analytical instrument for documenting the dark side of early industrial modernism with its dramatic upheavals. The ...