I don’t know if real street photography is dead or just dying. In any case, while it is facile to find photos on social media of shots purporting to be street photography, fewer than ten percent of them actually have anything at all to do with the genre.

I moderated street photography groups on Flickr 20 years ago, and I managed feeds on Bluesky until today. A lot has changed. People, and particularly young people, no longer feel comfortable taking candid photos of people. That’s understandable. It takes a specific skill set. The idea isn’t to sneak shots or prey on people. Instead, it is to make people comfortable enough with your presence that they–explicitly or tacitly–allow you to take photos of them in their natural state. Taking shots of strangers, usually without their knowledge and always without permission, isn’t for everyone. When I do street photography, I’m standing in the dead fucking center of the pavement on full display. I’m not a small man, so I’m easy to spot.

I have had a handful or two of people object to my taking such shots in my 50+ years on the street. Importantly, I was only photographing 1 person who objected. Most were either assholes doing dodgy shit they didn’t want seen (and in which I had zero interest) or they were women seeking attention I wasn’t about to provide.

But putting oneself in the position to be yelled at, frowned at, or questioned isn’t for everyone. Tough shit, because that, my friends, is the assignment. That is street photography. It’s hard, and if you can’t stomach it, STOP CLAIMING TO BE A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER, because you aren’t.

Street is a very specific genre. It’s a subgenre of Documentary Photography. What is street photography is simple. What it isn’t is more complicated. It is NOT everything you see when you’re standing next to the fucking street. It’s not photos of buildings, skylines, cityscapes. It isn’t cloudy skies, shop windows, or selfies. Street is not photos of buildings with dots of humans off in the distance. Your dog on the street ain’t street photography. It’s dog photography. Your shot of pretty flowers growing on the curb isn’t street photography. It’s fucking flower photography.

What is street photography, then? It is photographs of people living candidly, in urban, suburban, or rural settings. Street photography, like Soylent Green, is people.

The first and best street photographers were mostly documentary photographers–either before or in addition to their street work. Indeed, the main difference between documentary and street photography wasn’t location. It was whether or not you were being paid to do it. (If you don’t know who these photographers were, you can read more about them on previous posts on this blog.) Some people who folks THINK were street photographers weren’t, and never called themselves that. For instance, William Eggleston objected vehemently to being tagged with the street photographer label despite taking the same kinds of photos that modern so-called street photographers take. He, like Saul Leiter, Harry Gruyaert, and Ernst Haas were Art Photographers whose work involved both urban and rural settings.

Being in a human habitat doesn’t make it street photography. Don’t agree? Well, does taking a photo of trees in a forest make it wildlife photography? No, because if there wasn’t an animal in the shot, calling it that would be stupid. So, why did the founders of street photography call it that instead of something more descriptive? Because in the intervening 100+ years, no one has ever thought of a better catchy name. Candid Human Photography is too clunky. If you have a cooler name that would help people understand what it is, I’d love to hear it.

I’m rehashing all of this because of my recent experience on Bluesky. I created a “Real Street Photography” feed because photographers add the tag #streetphotography to any absolute bullshit they photograph on the street. In order to produce a feed taken by dedicated street photographers, ones who don’t call their urban or cityscape shots street photography, I had to ban 3,600 photographers. Yep, 3,600 people were blocked in order to produce a feed of roughly 45 photographers per day.

That means that way less than 10% of all people on Bluesky who called their photos #streetphotography were actually doing street photography. In fact, I think fewer than 5% were. The numbers got worse, not better, over time. It’s not that more non-street shooters showed up. It’s that most of us simply no longer share or take street photos.

It doesn’t help that street photographers are ironically BY FAR the least friendly of all photographers I’ve encountered. I spent far too many hours on that fucking feed and found ZERO street photographers I could claim as comrades.

So, after being a street photographer since I was 12, I’m done with it. But being done doesn’t mean I can stomach, for even a second, people taking the easy way out and shooting bullshit but calling it street because they want to sound cool. Urban photography is great.

But dude, buildings won’t curse you out if you’re being an asshole. Street photography requires your developing actual human relationship skills. And that, my friends, is why the art form is dying.