About the only art show I wanted to see over the summer was the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition of the color work of Garry Winogrand. It was, as to be expected of one of the great street photographers of the mid twentieth century, masterly. Projected on to the walls in the form of high quality slides, …
Category Archives: street photography
All Things are Photographable
I have very few heroes but one would undoubtedly be Garry Winogrand. For years he roamed the streets of New York photographing the everyday life he came across. People termed what he did street photography, a term he hated, but what ever you call it you gotta love it. Ordinary life is beautiful if …
Shot in New York
What better way to tour New York then to tour in the footsteps of its most iconic photographer? Arthur Felig, better known as Weegee, roamed the new York streets capturing the aftermath of mob hits and car crashes, murders and general mayhem. Now ‘Weegee’s Guide to New York’ shows you exactly where many of his …
Invisible City
Ken Schles documented 1980’s Bohemian New York in a series of black and white images taken while living in an East village tenement. They first came to light in the much lauded ‘Invisible City’ published in 1988 and were exhibited at MoMA. Mostly taken at night the images speak to a twilight world reminiscent of …
Police Work
Perhaps encouraged by some recent shootings on my New York street, I’ve been looking at the work of Leonard Freed.He was a Magnum photographer perhaps best known for his pictures of the police going about their daily business in the 1970’s. Gritty and realistic his work reminds me of another photographer obsessed with crime, Weegee.
Ed van der Elsken
From his first flush of fame in the mid-fifties when he published his book ‘Love on the Left Bank’, Ed van der Elsken spent his life recording the world that he came into contact with in his everyday travels. Whether he was visiting Tokyo or living in his native Amsterdam he managed to capture the …
Fred Stein
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud, Robert Doisneau and Fred Stein. Not heard of the last one? That’s a shame because like his more famous counterparts, has taken some charming images of the eternal city, Paris that deserve to be better known. Born in Dresden in 1909 he was one of the early pioneers of the hand-held …
Finding Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier is one of the most mysterious figures in street photography. A woman with obvious skill and a unique eye for the small absurdities of life that seemingly made no attempt to get her vast body of work, totaling some 100,000 images, published. If not for a chance purchase of negatives by John Maloof, …
Closer
Danish photographer Jacob Aue Sobol has some of the most distinctive imagery out there. Gritty, dirty and grainy his black and white work has a fabulous intimacy reminding me in turns of Daido Moriyama, William Klein and Anders Petersen. The themes of desire, lust and love are heavily prominent in his work. His first noted …
The New Yorkers According to Robert Herman
Since the late seventies Robert Herman has been taking pictures of New York and its inhabitants. He uses Kodachrome which gives the pictures, some of which are taken as late as 2005, an old school cool and vibrancy. Like a lot of street photographers Herman talks of how taking pictures helps him bond with his …
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