Back in my Flickr days, I curated a street photography group called Life, Love Joy & Pain (LLJP). It targeted one of the many street photography subgenres I have identified. A list of some of them are below, along with examples of famous shooters who popularized them. I’ve added some sub-bullets to show how even these genres can be broken into other specialties.

• Candid Human-centric
  • Relationship centered (Helen Levitt, Andre Kertesz)
  • Body Language & Activity Focused (Garry Winogrand, Joel Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander)
  • Candid Portraiture (Vivian Maier, Bruce Gilden)
  • Street Portraiture (Diane Arbus)
• Artistic B&W
  • People-centric (Robert Frank, Robert Doisneau, Bruce Davidson)
  • Architectural & Urban (Eugène Atget)
• Artistic Color
  • People-centric (Frank Herzog, Harry Gruyaert)
  • Architectural & Urban (Frank Herzog, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter)
  • Rural & Other (William Eggleston)
• Documentary (Gordon Parks, Lewis Hine)
• Street Portraiture (Robert Doisneau, Bruce Gilden)

There are more subgenres and photographers often played in more than one of them, but this is a good starting point to understand how street photography has been defined over the years. (You can check our Street Photography series on this blog or jump over to the Street Photographers Foundation for more info.)

In my LLJP group, I focused on candid human-centric street photography, whether capturing people performing the myriad activities that comprise life or demonstrating the breadth of relationships that humans have. Please note that relationships, in this context, involve other humans and the animals they surround themselves with. I chose those subjects because they are a particular interest of mine and because I see it is the most neglected street subgenre out there.

Young shooters seem to focus more on urban locations as stages, with humans and the buildings they occupy more as set pieces or props than living, breathing things. Those types of photos can be brilliant, but they miss the humanistic side that photography, among all art forms, brought the most to life.

This Day of Art I proclaim to be the start of the rebirth of the LLJP movement. Now, more than ever, human beings need to reclaim our humanity within our art.