Why is Street Photography Divided?

[@vonPeter_]

I never ever met those arguments between the fine art and documentary street photographers outside internet forums where gatekeepers trying to force their opinions on others. Everyone should spend more time with other artists in person, we often joking with each others, but the end of the day everyone is happy to grab a few beers and talk about experiences and share some thoughts. Your videos are amazing, because your contents is warmhearted and inclusive, I love them! We need more content on KZbin like yours!

[@williamlasl]

Yeah I think it’s one of those battles fought in forums and reddit. Like so many fights on the internet, pointless and more than a little ridiculous.

[@mirage6009]

personally, I try to ignore rules and take photos in whatever way that interests me. And sometimes, I think I made a mistake and look at the picture on my monitor, and it turned out to be the best photo of the day. haha

[@Anon54387]

This whole debate (true of most of these types of things) comes from over complicating things, engaging in hair splitting. Street photography can be both fine art and documentary, one or the other. Or even neither, something else entirely. This endless debate about what street photography is only is argued because of overcomplication. If it's photography on the streets it IS street photography, period.

[@timblass4811]

The whole beauty of street photography for me is the very fact it's not one style or thing, but a loose collective of them. I'll change what I shoot depending on where I am, what's available and how I feel on the day. It's still street photography in my book and ultimately that's all the matters tbh.

[@ChrisForman-g5g]

This is why the street photography community can be such a turnoff. Everyone has an opinion on what 'real' or 'authentic' street photography is. More often than not the loudest and most critical are those that couldn't take a decent photo if their life depended on it. I feel for anyone new picking up a camera who has an interest in street photography these days.... the bullshit rhetoric takes away from the true beauty of process of photography - in any genre. Take photos of who, what, where and when makes you happy. Your most important critic is yourself. Ignore the bullshit... go out, stay in, relax, take in your environment, enjoy the process, relish the output and learn from your mistakes with every image you capture. This is the beauty of the process

[@-Fr0nt]

Photojournalism is the only medium that needs strict rules for hopefully obvious reasons. As long as you’re not lying when asked about editing, using AI generation, and post processing, the rest just doesn’t matter. But we as a society DO need secure sources of unmanipulated or minimally manipulated photo and video documentation. It’s just hyper critical.

[@ijusttakephotos]

"To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work." - Art and Fear Defining what you are or what you want to be has its place but it isn't going to make you a better photographer. Labels exist to pin you in. Make work, have fun and enjoy the practice.

[@mclenowski]

There is space for every type of creativity. No need to box photographers into a “style” and hit them with a rule book. Go out there and make beautiful things 🎉

[@illkoncept]

Well said and put together so nicely!

[@imagepoint9726]

I share Hido Todd philosophy, "photograph like a documentarian, print like a painter." Whatever your vision use all the tools available to you.

[@rudyortega3285]

The genre doesn’t have to be taken so seriously and set with rules. I also fall in the middle with both a fine art approach and a documentary approach. There’s no rules with it. We’re not working for a newspaper or on assignment so that’s what makes it fun to express our own vision.

[@lamarbur]

I appreciate your video on explaining the divides of street photography. As a documentary photographer,I favor the documentary approach. But I also will switch towards having the license to modify, cropping mostly and converting from color to black and white imaging on certain photographs I am purposely seeking to capture. I also always insert myself with people because, I have the background of interviewing subjects. I find when you engage with the person, you build a human to human connection which will generate a much stronger image because it is their participation that really makes for a significantly better image. . I post both on my Facebook and Instagram feeds for my viewers can choose which one they prefer. I never alter images in terms of removing objects or reconstructing them.

[@enloupevin]

Great insight as usual Faisal. It is sad to see AI taking such a huge place in every day life but for street photography i feel that theskill, luck and practice is in the repetition of shooting. Idlove to take a trip to New York for a week or two and shoot more street, your work is very inspiring.

[@lucassousafilm]

What an amazing video!! So hard to find such good videos about photography like this lately!! Keep it up 💪🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

[@halvorevensen1840]

Best video I have seen in a long time! Cheers mate

[@shira_yone]

To me street photography just got to have one thing: emergent event. Things outside of your control coming together into this one moment, captured into an image. It has to be something that mostly comes from happenstance. Doesn't matter if you interact or affect your subject(s), asking them to pose and whatnot; what matters is that you never planned to do any of this from the get go, you didn't know these strangers and you didn't know they'll be there at the exact moment you were there. You just happened to meet these lovely people doing their day to day activities, then you go out another day and suddenly fog comes in; you didn't plan nor anticipate this but takes some beautiful shot anyway. Maybe you turned at the wrong corner and see nice set of buildings, see an interesting occurrence, etc. I would barely consider a studio level planned cityscape photography as street photography, much less street portraiture photography. Street photography is a broad subject, but it shouldn't be all encompassing; a distinction is useful and valuable.

[@mymatrix9]

That was a GREAT video! Very well explained, there's history, technique, context, everything is perfectly balanced and summarized. I hope we'll see more of this format.

[@hughrawson]

Very well put together Faizal. Some great examples too. Thank you.

[@trevorwisecup]

Why not be both at the same time?

[@giusepperavagnan187]

I LOVE your videos and photography!! You're a great inspiration for me, keep up the fantastic work!

[@shanestorozukphotography]

Brilliant video essay Faizal. Well constructed discussion and I think you're right...we should spend less time worrying about which method is "correct" and how they can both enrich our lives as you so eloquently stated.

[@ECGardner]

Thanks for making this video - it's great to see more content here that is about art as opposed to just gear and such. I don't think any photograph can be 100% truly "objective" (there's still the choice of what to include in the frame vs what to exclude). But at the same time, even heavily edited street photos still have some connection to the real world, so they aren't 100% subjective either. I see the divide you are talking about as an essential source of creative tension in the work of every good street photographer. It's less of a divide and more of a spectrum that everyone needs to locate themselves within. And it's okay to drift back and forth too, "staying in your lane" is overrated!

[@adamtaufiqsuharto4519]

Love your colour grading of the video.

[@ReubenJBrown]

Faizal makes a good contribution here to a long-running conversation - though I wonder if making the distinction between 'photojournalism' and 'street photography' would be more helpful. In photojournalism, strict ethical standards apply and the scene must be represented as-found without significant edits: the photograph must present the truth. In street photography, something beyond the 'truth' comes into play - variously though of as emotion, feeling, nostalgia, whatever semiotic device you choose. I find it's less a battle of 'art' and 'authenticity' than about 'truth' and 'language'. and the side a photographer falls of that distinction is to do with the purpose of the photograph, something less addressed in this video

[@ndc5544p]

Some photos look great unedited, others look great with heavy edits. I don't care if it's "fine art" or "documentary". If it resonates with me, I'll photograph it. I'm not the one to judge what my photography is.

[@winc06]

Always thoughtful, Faisal. I think that people used to call composed photography in a city, travel photography, or just photography. I think of street photography as something else entirely, something rebellous trying to break the usual rules of composition. The use of black and white which moves the image away from documentation toward abstraction kind of underlines that.

[@Daneunfltrd]

As someone who enjoys getting into street photography, I’ve questioned myself on what style I’m personally capturing. I don’t exactly go by rules either, but I do try to capture the candid, authentic moments when I can. I think it should also be noted that it can depend on your location. In North Carolina, there isn’t enough going on to really shoot in documentary style because these areas aren’t that heavy with foot traffic. There’s lots of cities with enough photographable action, but sometimes you can only capture what’s around you. I’m still tuning my eye to see different perspectives so I don’t believe it’s completely impossible in my area, just need to get out there more.

[@ImVengeance127]

Really interesting video! Loved the way you contrasted the two sides. Side note: I think your website is set to private?

[@henrybobb]

Yes, I confirm his website is set to private since some days

[@sarahceline22]

This has been so eye-opening! I absolutely love looking at documentary photography, but never actually find myself shooting it. I think I'm more drawn towards the artistic side of photography, with the occasional human subject (EU privacy laws also don't help). Never really considered the different styles of street photography, so this video was super helpful and also a source of affirmation that it's ok to shoot whatever I want 😅

[@gilberttripet6989]

Well done dear Faizal! Why oppose what is complementary? Both approaches enrich our vision of the world

[@nickb863]

Jeff Wall’s “Marks of Indifference” was a foundational text for me. As someone who falls more on the ‘fine art’ side of the equation.

[@dew1_rosal14]

Beautifully made video. Not only your photography is great so are your video skills. Thank you

[@SivertAlmvik]

My interpretation of street photography is pretty wide. I shoot street in my way, which is perhaps more like the documentary style. What others do, I do not care at all. I like what I like, other people like what they like. Post processing. If you're not a journalist, or a documentarist, I do not care of you crop or remove/add stuff from your image. It is your thing. Do it how you want. Let others do their thing as they want. I run a street photo collective with members who have alot of different styles. We discuss these things (in between the never ending gear discussions). In my eyes, I haven't noticed a tension or a conflict between photographers. Heated debates, sure, but not so heated that you won't see the same people at the next meeting, having fun talking to each other while having a drink.

[@TheMPhotography]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Very nice insights and keep up the good work.

[@henrybobb]

You nailed it Faizal, great video.

[@kne321video]

Excellent video 👏🏻 And you are totally right. Enjoy what you like to photograph and find your own audience.

[@winslow_j]

This video single handedly answered so many questions that I've had about my work over the last year or two. I went from a fine art approach to more of a documentary approach, to now landing somewhere in the middle, but I couldn't define what I was doing before because I didn't know what to call it. Definitely heavier editing to convey a feeling, now I've stripped that away. Your work is constantly changing which is fun, but can be confusing sometimes when you feel like you can't define what it actually is. Really great video.

[@romulocuy4061]

Great topic and video! So creative

[@James-qv1dr]

I don't know if it's just me, but I find most photography terminology cringe. It's not that serious. Take pictures that you like. People who waste energy saying other people are wrong are really weird to me.

[@AlanGreenberg-i8p]

Very thought provoking as to where my work fits.

[@IsThatYouSimon]

Beautiful video Faizal

[@anguswrench]

not sure if you will see this, but are your glasses Chimi A2s? I like them and need a new pair of glasses lol

[@Michele_aka_Latente]

4:50 HBC don't talk about photographer but journal editor that take the original photo and recrop it to fit in a book or a newspaper.

[@alexalexis7899]

If you place the weight solely on “documentation”, it means that any snap of a moment is a valid form of photographic expression and that is not the case; “art is subjective” does not mean that everything goes; that’s one of the most misunderstood, misused and egregious attacks on artistic expression - a photograph’s form is inherently built on choices made by the photographer’s sensibilities, chiefly, what moments his/her eyes are drawn to and what framing and compositional choices are made to register them. That’s what elevates the moment, that’s where the value’s at. If people expect peculiar or interesting moments when they hear “street photography” as opposed to purely compositional shots like Haas or Leiter, that is a different question, which, I think, is what you meant to dig into: is human behavior captured on the street more valuable than juxtapositions of forms, textures and colors also found in the street. To me, the answer is no; both are equally valid and potentially emotionally impactful interpretations of what is available on the other side of our front doors.

[@kenzou22]

Well explain , love it 😍😍

[@Tickled_Trout]

Excellent narrative, enjoyed the video content.

[@brianhinesley]

have to dissagree with henri, there have been so many cropped photographs that really cut out the clutter of excess and can often make an image feel more symmetrical. Is it better to get the image without having to crop? of course! but sometimes the moment is more important then the perfect framing and the ability to crop later can be a life saver to that image.

[@AMDemon420]

I enjoy and respect both styles. Art is subjective. If you want to make art, then do it in whatever way speaks you. Do your thing and don't worry about other people. Like Faizal said, people are going to interpret your art through their own perspective anyway.

[@MikeChudley]

absolutely brilliant, well said man.

[@soundslikeknee]

🎉 great video on photography

[@donjagoe]

Great film-thank you.

[@christinebeckett7060]

"Silently judging each other"? If only!! 🤣

[@vn3953]

Думаю нужно снимать все и потом просто сортировать снимки по стопкам - для искусства и для документирования эпохи.

[@RickyRockyMallorca]

Captured the pure essence of why I picked up a camera ❤

[@padraicomeara]

Thanks Faizal, I appreciated that.

[@L.Spencer]

I'm not worried about it. I just appreciate what others see.

[@scotty456]

I'm somewhere in the middle. However, at the end of the day, if you're happy with the photograph you made then to hell with other people's outspoken criticism that you didn't ask for.

[@ObservingBeauty]

Brilliant video. Thanks

[@MichielHeijmans]

I feel all types of photography have splits like this. And all types, but perhaps street in particular, have purists. I dislike purists. They limit others by harsh comments and demotivation. Cartier Bresson is a purist. But did so much for the genre. I think. In the end, I think fine art is about the end product first, perhaps commercial means. Documentary is like more about the process perhaps? Depending on my mood, I feel it’s a blessing to have the choice. Great video, Faizal. Food for thought.

[@the.jonfernandez]

Diversity of Expression 💯💯

[@jimmycapp29]

Long story short: I was a professional dancer years ago. The same split happened with Ballet vs Modern vs Hip Hop/Break dancing etc... Now that I'm a photographer I began to hear the discussions about everything you're talking about in this video. Blah blah, yada yada. Art is art and it's based in your intention and we all have different approaches and techniques. Do your thing and make art!

[@paulf1767]

I’m a lousy photographer I struggle with ‘telling a story’ but I enjoy what I do. So I take from it what I can and so should others. There’s not a right and wrong in my opinion.

[@adarshkaran6611]

Great video!

[@luischavezphoto]

Another banger brought to you by your favorite tiktok viral star. Also: congrats on the quarter mil! We are all proud of you.

[@FaizalWestcott]

Bro gave a pizza review and now thinks he’s a philosopher

[@FaizalWestcott]

It’s not that deep bro

[@austiinjohn]

Bro is so good at this

[@rf.photographs]

Hot take: 'd even extend the discourse cityscape/architecture photography is street photography. 😌 BTW I'm right in the middle too, shooting both "fine art" and "documentary" 😎

[@gerardneedham]

Dam this video slaps! ❤

[@aaronedgeart]

Absolutely on point.

[@jackjross]

Insert Content Credentials via Leica M11P 🙌🏼 Whatever your flavor is, just shoot and enjoy the time as it passes by.

[@jannengelken6017]

At last someone is addressing this! Thank you for that, dear Faizal, and best regards from Hamburg

[@MythDealer]

That Magnum Filson bag is looking good.

[@raphaelelisha3160]

I think a big part of my passion for documentary street photography is the challenge of successfully capturing candid street photography. I can’t help but think that fine art street photographers do so because documentary photography is simply too confronting/risky.

[@ChrisDN]

The tendency of humans to turn things that are highly nuanced in to a flat, binary choice. I'll continue focusing on creating whatever I enjoy and ignore the noise.

[@KillerTacos54]

Great video

[@darrenwatson3732]

I do whatever I like, there'll always be someone that won't like it either way.

[@anta40]

I'm more one the fine art side: perceiving the world the way I like it. Photo documentary/raising social awareness etc isn't my thing, let someone else do it. Perhaps because I make photos mostly for my own pleasure 😀

[@impatrickt]

we got photography video essays before GTA6

[@endah08]

I think some people are asking the wrong question about AI in photography. It’s not so much about right and wrong but meaning. If you’re going to replace a sky or add a person into your photo, what’s the point in taking it in the first place? Really, why not just compile the whole thing in your computer?

You totally nailed it. I’ve been contemplating this very subject for years and you just come along and wrap it all up in 11 minutes and 17 seconds. My hat’s off to you, sir. I’ve always argued that the divide is pointless for the poorly defined practice that street photography is. The genre might have similarities with documentary photography, especially in the visual sense. But even then most practitioners come at it with an artful approach. It’s documentary photography’s artful sister and art photography’s documentarian brother. It’s that sweet spot that makes it whimsical, alluring and ever-changing. We should all get over ourselves and accept that, while there are categories and trends, street photography is by nature elusive and democratic at the same time.

[@blakeandrew2158]

Imma rewatch to count how many different cameras he used! Love the collection!!! Love this video too mate

[@TheWutangclan1995]

I photograph like a documentary photographer and edit like a beat maker.

[@SteveJobbed]

Only one rule, THERE ARE NO RULES. Rules in video/photography are meant to be broken! Or else we would have only stagnant, boring photos and no new styles created! Sure there are rules for composition and I always followed the rule of thirds, but when you know WHY those exist for a “technically good” image, you can break them to make great art. I think we should all do what we want and not to try imitate others. Photography is an extension of your eye, and we all see things differently

[@TonyEbikemeJr]

This was so good. One of my favourite topics and video you’ve done. 👏👏👏👏

[@deathbystereo-]

never heard anyone talk about this. why? cos i dont think it exists. you keep saying often argue? where?

[@simonbnyc]

The most powerful documentary photographs over the years are as much about light and composition as they are about humanism. The likes of Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Ian Berry and Matt Black have all produced work where beauty holds the same weight as the stories they tell, no matter how moving the subject matter may be.

[@matsefcik]

28 seconds in and yeah, this one is gonna hit Edit: it hit.

[@paulthompson2991]

It is both... no divide... just different

[@_leahcim]

muito bom

[@dippy2k839]

Its suggested that when noble people were painted many centuries ago, they would be painted to flatter the subject. You're not going to paint the nations leaders with their massive nose, and would alter proportions to flatter them as well as change things in the back and foreground to make the picture more simple or complex/interesting. This is how I see the debate. If it's interesting you can document it, it doesn't need to be the raw 100% truth as no one is going to see what you saw the same way, it's your photo you took it, you decided to take it, why not make it slightly more unique and interesting and aesthetic if in your eyes improves (bad or good) upon the story or the scene.

[@pdk]

the truth is that "street photography" is a made up label to cover a broad set of varying photographies. alice may like to crop, bob may think it's "cheating" but trying to decide which can be called "street photography" and which is "not street photography" is a rather pointless exercise. if i have rules for how i do my photography, how can that possibly mean that you need to follow my rules? it's like saying because i write my poetry in english, all poetry must be written in english. very pointless. if my definition of "brunch" is different than yours, is one of us right and other wrong? nope. we just mean different things when we use the word.

[@stevenanthony578]

I make photos I like. I'm not concerned with what others think about it.

[@The.Cycling.Therapist]

Lovely journey and story telling. Well timed and informed.

[@MrPhotographerDude]

There’s no divide at all

[@alanpods______8260]

This supposed ‘controversy’ has been made up by sad-Faisal for clicks. He’s a KZbinr, go figure.

[@DirkMenker]

VERY interesting thoughts and examples. Thank you!

[@jasontroll]

AMEN

[@Tech_Stuff_and_Other_Stuff]

Documentary street photography is not a problem, bad documentary street photography that is constantly being promoted as being good is the problem.

[@moilami1]

A very good video of interesting subject. Good to understand different sides.

[@coapk1]

my favourite video of yours, killer work

[@guy_trahan]

Take photos how you want and edit how you want/feel. They're your photos. 🤷‍♂ More importantly, what flavour of Pringles were those?😋

[@zebobby3251]

😎