Maria and I have considered the question, “What is Street Photography?” for years. We’ve settled on this definition: Street photography documents humans and their behavior, in situations wherein they act spontaneously, generally but not always in urban settings. Street photography is a visual history of contemporary human life, not just of human cities and environs.…
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…
Fans of photography know this iconic photo, taken by Dorothea Lange during the height of the Depression for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Some, like me, even know the purported story behind the photo. But few know the whole truth. The FSA captioned the photo, “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age…
As a child of the 1960s, I am drawn to photos taken during my youth. Colors were primary; cars were large, loud, inefficient, and unapologetic. Gas stations were a way of life. No refilling every two weeks for that lot. You bought gas often and since it was cheap, you liked. Filling stations were like…
There has long been a debate on when photographers should shoot in black and white (bw) versus color. This is particularly true with respect to street photography, since many old shooters have held loud biases against shooting color. Before we debate the merits of their arguments, we need to understand a bit of history. For…
I’m not back on social media, but I wanted to share what I think is a cool “discovery” my wife and I made — a possible photograph of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother, Theo. Now, before I start, let me tell you the “facts.” One, there are a number of confirmed photos of Theo,…
And now, after a five-year absence, here we are again as though nothing has happened. In truth, nothing much has. We suspended the series primarily because blogging turned out to be a horrible way of reaching people. Though we get intermittent readers, most of the people who stopped by were other bloggers, doing so, in…
WITHIN this website, on any number of occasions, we have held discussions on the merits of color versus black and white photography. I won’t repeat those here, or even bother to link to them (because I can’t be arsed to look them up). Instead, I will post below some photos from FSA photographer Louise Rosskam,…
Farm Service Administration (FSA) photographer Edwin Rosskam is not as widely known as some of the FSA’s other artists. However, his work (and that of his wife, Louise Rosskam) needs to be known and preserved. Rather than waste a great deal of space detailing Rosskam’s history, I’ll let his own words speak for him :…
As a photographer and editor, I’ve recently become distressed by those few photographers who insist on taking photographs that don’t conform to common photographic practice. That is to say, these frondeurs ignore 180 years of tradition and insist on taking shots that are unique, having little or no banality to speak of. I don’t understand…
The Artists' Sanctum 