THE NEW STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

The New Street Photography

Recently, I began to look over my rather vast archives of street photography. The question in mind: Is anything here actually worth saving? That may sound a bit melodramatic, but allow me to explain. Now that some of the dust has settled with street photography, I think it is a very valid exercise for one to look through their archive and question the long-term viability of their images. In today’s world, where everything is photographed, perhaps I do not need all 200,000 images. Actually, my archive is less than 2000 in reality, but I thought I would use a number more realistic to the vast majority of my colleagues out there in the street photography community. I’ve always been harsh when it comes to editing my archive and this time I would be even more brutal. 

So, what did I discover? The news, I am afraid, is not all that great. Indeed, I discovered that my archive contains a vast number of images that, most likely, will never be of any significance to me, let alone anyone else. Most of these images are from what I might term my “Bruce Gilden” period. Sure, Bruce has done a lot of good for street photography, but Bruce has also done a lot of bad too! Namely, he is one of the principal contemporary culprits behind making the “machine gun” approach to photographing random people on the sidewalk so infectious. You know, that kind of street photography where one merely photographs strangers going about their day doing very ordinary things. Often, the impetus behind pulling the trigger nothing more than some stranger’s strangeness. The result being millions and millions (perhaps billions) of photographs lacking any genuine intrinsic value. In fact, much of the pushback on the street photography “aesthetic” has been as a result of this very kind of photograph.

Copyright ⓒ Michael Ernest Sweet

Copyright ⓒ Michael Ernest Sweet

In my case, I just decided to delete many, even most, of these photographs from my archives. I’m a fundamental believer in the ephemeral nature of this kind of photography, so it was easily done. What was most useful about this activity was not the reduction in my archive but rather the shift in how I view my work and street photography more generally. I think some of the most important and valuable work I’ve made has been the work that doesn’t merely show some stranger but shows some stranger in a particular historical moment. In other words, I found that my most compelling street photographs, upon reflection, are those which contain a strong crossover into photojournalism. They are not only or “purely” photojournalistic, as they also contain a strong creative element. That is, I have imposed my stylistic signature on the images to the point of them not qualifying as pure journalism. They are, in a way, a product of a new genre, a “type” of street photography. And, this new type of street photography — one with a strong historical significance captured through photojournalistic motivations and aesthetic, is where I predict the future of street photography will, eventually, settle. 

Copyright ⓒ Michael Ernest Sweet

Those images of strange looking people doing ordinary things, captured in a historically sanitized environment, I believe, will become the waste pile of contemporary photography.  There will be some, of course, that find their way into the cannons of art history, some of Bruce’s work, for example. But for most of us, our production of this kind of image has been nothing more than a pastime, at best, and a waste of time at worst. For street photography to survive, in any permanent and public way, photographs will need to contain a strong narrative that is situated in a particular and noteworthy moment in time. That is, images will need to carefully straddle the line between “photo as historical data” and “photo as art”. In this way, we might imagine street photography as the birth of a new hybrid form of photography – one that takes the best of photojournalism and combines it with the strongest sensibilities from traditional visual art. Of course, this will also necessitate that the street photographer herself reframe her pursuit when on the street. No longer the foxhound of the weird and unusual human form or personality, this new street photographer will instead be the chaser of public history as exhibited in human form.